UPS Insists That It Is Not Helping The NSA 'Interdict' Packages To Install Backdoors

from the not-us! dept

After Glenn Greenwald's book came out last week, one of the big stories was the additional revelations about the NSA's interdiction program -- in which the NSA grabs packages of computer equipment that are being shipped, outfits the equipment with backdoors -- and sends them along their shipping route as if nothing happened. Most famously, it included an image of it happening, showing a clear Cisco box: Cisco has insisted publicly that it has nothing to do with this program and apparently complained directly to the President about this program, and how it harms their reputation. While some people doubt whether or not Cisco is being totally forthright, others wondered if perhaps it wasn't Cisco, but a third party, such as whoever ships Cisco's equipment. It turns out that company is often UPS, and Matthew Keys, writing for TheBlot, got UPS to vehemently deny assisting the NSA as well:

UPS, which Cisco has used since 1997 to ship hardware to customers around the world, said on Thursday that it did not voluntarily allow government officials to inspect its packages unless it is required to do so by law.

“UPS’ long-standing policy is to require a legal court-ordered process, such as a subpoena, before responding to any third-party requests,” UPS spokeswoman Kara Ross wrote in an e-mail to TheBlot Magazine. “UPS is not aware of any court orders from the NSA seeking to inspect technology-related shipments.”

In a follow-up e-mail, Ross said UPS had no knowledge of similar orders from the FBI, CIA or any other federal agency.

Keys also reached out to other popular shipping options, including the US Postal Service, FedEx and DHL. USPS says that they don't participate in any such NSA program (though, some may question the validity of that statement). FedEx and DHL appear to have simply ignored repeated requests for comment from Keys.

Of course, it's not impossible that there are other methods being used to get the equipment -- or that the folks who handle these "special" projects are kept way far away from any official spokesperson. Clearly, however, the NSA can get these packages, and now the doubt is going to spread across pretty much everyone in the logistics chain, no matter what they say.

Filed Under: glenn greenwald, interdiction, nsa, surveillance, tao
Companies: cisco, ups

Cisco Goes Straight To The President To Complain About The NSA Intercepting Its Hardware

from the NSA-vows-to-take-this-country-down-from-the-inside dept

One of the previously-unseen NSA documents released in conjunction with Glenn Greenwald's book, "No Place to Hide," contained this slide providing further details about the agency's interception of computer hardware.

As part of the NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO), shipments are grabbed en route and loaded up with physical spyware before they reach the end user. The slide notes that this "supply chain interdiction" is one of TAO's "most productive operations."

The people in the photo may have had their identities concealed, but there's no mistaking the logo and name on the side of the box. Here's a closer look:

Cisco was none too pleased to see its hardware being given a spyware payload by NSA operatives. Its general counsel, Mark Chandler, said the following in a blog post addressing the newly-leaked document.

As a matter of policy and practice, Cisco does not work with any government, including the United States Government, to weaken our products. When we learn of a security vulnerability, we respond by validating it, informing our customers, and fixing it. We react the same when we find that a customer’s security has been impacted by external forces, regardless of what country or form of government or how that security breach occurred. We offer customers robust tools to defend their environments against attack, and detect attacks when they are happening. By doing these things, we have built and maintained our customers’ trust. We expect our government to value and respect this trust.

That the NSA has done what it can to ensure Cisco's world dominance (via its Huawei-related espionage) is probably of little comfort at this point. Anyone looking to purchase Cisco equipment has probably decided to take their business elsewhere. Cisco expressed some concern about the NSA's detrimental effect on its overseas sales last November. This photo only makes that situation worse.

Cisco has now decided to take its complaints right to the top.

Warning of an erosion of confidence in the products of the U.S. technology industry, John Chambers, the CEO of networking giant Cisco Systems, has asked President Obama to intervene to curtail the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency.

In a letter dated May 15 (obtained by Re/code and reprinted in full below), Chambers asked Obama to create “new standards of conduct” regarding how the NSA carries out its spying operations around the world. The letter was first reported by The Financial Times.

Chambers goes even further than Cisco's counsel, decrying the NSA's tactics and the damage they're doing to his company's reputation.

“We simply cannot operate this way; our customers trust us to be able to deliver to their doorsteps products that meet the highest standards of integrity and security,” Chambers wrote. “We understand the real and significant threats that exist in this world, but we must also respect the industry’s relationship of trust with our customers.”

The NSA's self-destructive "no one can touch us" attitude is finally beginning to hurt it -- and everyone it affects. This revelation will chase customers -- including potential targets -- to companies they believe are out of the agency's reach. American companies will be able to offer no assurances that their products have been intercepted/sabotaged. The entire situation is beyond their control, but they'll be the ones ultimately paying the price for the NSA's overreach.

Filed Under: barack obama, interdiction, john chambers, mark chandler, nsa, surveillance, tao
Companies: cisco

Leak Shows NSA Breached Huawei's Internal Servers, Grabbed Executive Emails And Source Code

from the corporate-surveillance dept

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel and the New York Times published another leaked document, this one detailing the NSA's breach of Huawei's servers. The end game, however, seems to be less targeted at monitoring the company for its supposed spying efforts (via its hardware) than to install NSA backdoors in hardware used by countries that would prefer not to "buy American."

The agency pried its way into the servers in Huawei’s sealed headquarters in Shenzhen, China’s industrial heart, according to N.S.A. documents provided by the former contractor Edward J. Snowden. It obtained information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches that Huawei boasts connect a third of the world’s population, and monitored communications of the company’s top executives.

One of the goals of the operation, code-named “Shotgiant,” was to find any links between Huawei and the People’s Liberation Army, one 2010 document made clear. But the plans went further: to exploit Huawei’s technology so that when the company sold equipment to other countries — including both allies and nations that avoid buying American products — the N.S.A. could roam through their computer and telephone networks to conduct surveillance and, if ordered by the president, offensive cyberoperations.

Much of this is unsurprising. The government has long held (even though it has failed to produce any proof) that Huawei is used by the Chinese government to spy on other countries via subverted hardware, so it would make sense for the NSA to have the company under surveillance. But what's happening here seems to exceed the bounds of defensive surveillance and head into corporate espionage territory.

As Karl Bode pointed out in an earlier story about the US government warning Americans away from Huawei network equipment, many of the Huawei spying allegations can be traced back to its main competitor, Cisco. Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel sees the NSA's Huawei spying as little more than a way for it to protect some of its main collection points.

[T]he articles make it clear that 3 years after they started this targeted program, SHOTGIANT, and at least a year after they gained access to the emails of Huawei’s CEO and Chair, NSA still had no evidence that Huawei is just a tool of the People’s Liberation Army, as the US government had been claiming before and since. Perhaps they’ve found evidence in the interim, but they hadn’t as recently as 2010.

Nevertheless the NSA still managed to steal Huawei’s source code. Not just so it could more easily spy on people who exclusively use Huawei’s networks. But also, it seems clear, in an attempt to prevent Huawei from winning even more business away from Cisco.

I suspect we’ll learn far more on Monday. But for now, we know that even the White House got involved in an operation targeting a company that threatens our hegemony on telecom backbones.

If there's been no evidence uncovered that Huawei equipment is being deployed with Chinese government-friendly backdoors, then the NSA is engaged in self-serving corporate espionage, one that keeps Cisco -- and consequently, the NSA -- in wide circulation.

Even if you believe this is exactly the sort of thing our intelligence agencies should be doing, it's hard to ignore the inherent hypocrisy of the government's words and actions. Even Jack Goldsmith, who has previously argued that the US needs an "invasive NSA," had this to say about the latest leak.

The Huawei revelations are devastating rebuttals to hypocritical U.S. complaints about Chinese penetration of U.S. networks, and also make USG protestations about not stealing intellectual property to help U.S. firms’ competitiveness seem like the self-serving hairsplitting that it is.

While the revelations that the NSA is surveilling a foreign company deemed untrustworthy by government officials are hardly surprising, the whole situation is tainted by the US government's hardline against Huawei. Many accusations have surfaced over the last decade but have remained unproven, even as the US government has locked Huawei out of domestic contracts and persuaded other countries to seek different vendors. This isn't passive monitoring being deployed to detect threats. This is an active invasion of a private company's internal network in order to subvert its hardware and software, all of which will likely benefit its largest competitor, either directly or indirectly. The NSA isn't Cisco's personal army, but their mutual goals (widespread Cisco deployment) are so closely aligned, the agency might as well be.

If the NSA has found any evidence that Huawei is operating on behalf of the Chinese government, now would be the time to make that information public. With Michelle Obama's goodwill tour of China underway, it's hardly beneficial for our surveillance hypocrisy to be on display (again).

Filed Under: china, economic espionage, espionage, nsa, surveillance
Companies: cisco, huawei

DailyDirt: Composers You've Probably Never Heard Of

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Music is all around us, playing in elevators and on customer support phone calls that seem to take forever to reach an actual human being to speak with. People generally know the names of the singers of the songs that get stuck in their heads, but the composers are often unknown or easily forgotten. As ASCAP celebrates its 100th anniversary, we'll point out a few composers who you might not recognize.

• Opus No. 1 by Tim Carleton was written in 1989 when Carleton was 16 years old, and his high school buddy Darrick Deel made it the default hold music for about 65 million Cisco phone sets worldwide in the 1990s. The song has achieved a bit of popularity because some people think it's catchy in a way. [url]
• If you've ever wondered why all pop music sounds the same to you, the answer may be Max Martin. Max Martin (aka Martin Sandberg) has written songs for bands/singers such as the Backstreet Boys, Avril Lavigne, Britney Spears, Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Justin Bieber, Pink, Kelly Clarkson and many others -- and is credited with over a dozen Billboard number-one hits. [url]
• Mamoru Samuragochi is a supposedly deaf composer who wrote a lot of popular music such as the soundtrack for Resident Evil (as well as his Symphony No. 1 "Hiroshima" which sold very well in Japan). A violin piece credited to him will be played in the Olympic figure skating event, but it's recently been revealed that his music was actually written by Takashi Niigaki and that Samuragochi isn't really as deaf as he's been pretending to be. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: composers, darrick deel, mamoru samuragochi, max martin, music, pop songs, takashi niigaki, tim carleton
Companies: ascap, cisco

Two Big Patent Trolling Cases End With Whimpers Instead Of Bangs

from the deflating-trolls dept

Here's a follow up on two big patent trolling cases that we've covered a bit in the past. The first involves the world's largest patent trolling operation, Intellectual Ventures in one of its very first patent lawsuits (for years it just threatened and got companies to settle) in which it sued Motorola Mobility, as the company was in the process of being acquired by Google (which recently announced it was selling off the company while keeping the patents). Google had been an early supporters of Intellectual Ventures back when it was being presented as a "defense fund" against trolls, before Nathan Myhrvold pulled a big bait and switch. Since then Google has been a clear target for Intellectual Ventures, since the company was supportive of patent reform that would neuter IV's parasitic business model.

That big case has now ended in a mistrial after a jury couldn't decide who should prevail. A mistrial is hardly the end, as IV is already talking about a retrial (and hyping up that it still has other patent cases against Motorola), but it certainly suggests that the case isn't nearly as open and shut as IV had been suggesting in the past.

Moving on to another high profile patent troll case. For a few years now we've been covering a company called Innovatio which was threatening lots of companies, claiming that anyone who used WiFi infringed on its patents, but that (out of the kindness of its heart) it wasn't targeting individual users "at this stage." Instead, it went after a ton of small businesses, including coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants and hotels -- exactly the type of businesses which wouldn't be interested in spending money on a costly legal battle.

A bunch of makers of WiFi access points, including Cisco, Netgear and Motorola actually teamed up in an attempt to smack Innovatio down to protect their own customers. They noted that they had all licensed the patent in question in the past, and that should cover the end users. Furthermore, the patent itself was subject to RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms which Innovatio never mentioned to people it was threatening and suing. In fact, they argued that Innovatio was actually engaged in a form of racketeering. While a judge in the case, unfortunately, didn't allow the racketeering claims to move forward, he did determine that if Innovatio was due a license, the royalty rate was less than 10 cents per device, rather than the much, much, much higher numbers Innovatio had been pushing.

Recognizing its case was going nowhere, it appears that Innovatio has agreed to settle. Innovatio admitted that over 100 million of the devices they had sent threats over were already licensed, but has agreed to "license" the remaining 85 million devices for $2.7 million, or about 3.2 cents per device. This is how lots of patent trolling lawsuits end. Innovatio was looking for a much larger payout, but $2.7 million is still pretty significant money for very questionable activity. Cisco, in reporting this, notes that it spent $13 million on the litigation (not even counting the settlement) and highlights just how ridiculous the whole thing is, and how some basic changes to patent laws might stop trolls like Innovatio from targeting end users.

But that expenditure would not have been necessary if Innovatio had met its obligations to license on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and had come to Cisco seeking a reasonable license first rather than targeting our customers and those of other manufacturers. And, if our laws included provisions requiring those who target innocent third party users of products to register their claims at the FTC and make sure users know they can take their claims to manufacturers like Cisco, it seems unlikely Innovatio would have engaged in its letter-writing shakedown against end users. And if they thought they might be on the hook for the $13M we had to spend, they might have thought twice about the way they approached their licensing scheme. Provisions to deal with this problem, and with the problem of lawsuits that target users of products rather than those who develop and sell the products, were included in legislation that overwhelmingly passed the U.S. House of Representatives recently. We hope the Senate will act quickly as well.

In the meantime, we hope the “Innovatio” outcome will cause others who are undertaking similar efforts to step back and rethink their strategy.

Trolling behavior has become so pervasive in the patent arena that anyone denies that it's a problem is either lying or in deep, deep denial. However, it's good to see that a couple of big trolls aren't having quite as easy a time of it as they likely expected.

Filed Under: mobile devices, patent trolling, patents, wifi
Companies: cisco, google, innovatio, intellectual ventures, motorola, netgear

Cisco Admits That Foreigners Afraid Of NSA Revelations May Have Hurt Latest Earnings

from the and-so-it-begins dept

From very early on in the NSA leaks, I wrote that the tech industry should be furious about the NSA revelations because it was inevitably going to harm them tremendously. It's taken a while, but we're seeing more and more companies recognize (finally) that the NSA can have a real impact on business. On Cisco's earnings call (which wasn't good), the company admitted that fears about the NSA in other countries is likely having an impact, albeit small for now.

"I do not think it is the major factor across all of emerging. I do think it is a factor, however, in China," Chambers said.

"It's not having a material impact. But it's certainly causing people to stop and then rethink decisions, and that is, I think, reflected in our results," said Rob Lloyd, president of development and sales.

And this is why the tech industry needs to be a lot louder on these issues, and to actually take it seriously. There's a very real economic impact. The more recent revelations about the NSA hacking into Google and Yahoo's data centers should be a wake up call to even more tech companies, though, unfortunately it appears that many still want to hide under the radar.

Filed Under: earnings, nsa, surveillance
Companies: cisco

WiFi Patent Troll Told That Each License Should Be Less Than 10 Cents

from the that-limits-the-damage dept

We've written a few times about patent troll Innovatio, which claims to hold some patents on WiFi, saying that anyone using WiFi (including home users) are infringing, though it has chosen "at this stage" not to sue home users. It is, however, going after tons of coffee shops, hotels, grocery stores and restaurants for offering WiFi, demanding $2,300 to $5,000 to settle. A year ago, we wrote about how a bunch of WiFi equipment manufacturers, including Cisco, Motorola and Netgear had teamed up to go after Innovatio. Not only do they contest the validity of the patents in question, but they highlight a ton of really questionable behavior by Innovatio and claim that the troll is involved in a form of racketeering. Among other accusations, the manufacturers note that Innovatio includes expired patents in its list that it threatens people over, and it leaves out that the patents are part of the WiFi standard, and there are commitments related to them that they'll be licensed on RAND (Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory) terms.

The lawsuit is moving forward, and there was just a ruling on one key part of it. The court decided that before getting into everything else, it would try to determine what the RAND rate should be for the manufacturers (which are separate from the end-users like the coffee shops that Innovatio is going after). The idea is that having the rate set upfront might help the parties settle. Innovatio pushed (of course) to have the rate be calculated based on the price of the final product that was for sale. For example, it claimed that 10% of a laptops value is from WiFi (um, what?!?) and that its patents deserve to get 6% of the value of WiFi. This calculates down to them wanting $4.72 per laptop. The company has other prices for other items: $3.39 per WiFi access point, $16.17 per tablet and $36.90 per "inventory tracking device."

The manufacturers point out that this is insane. And if there needs to be a base from which to calculate a royalty rate it should be the WiFi chip itself, which these days go for about $3 each. Thankfully, the court agrees with the manufacturers and more or less eviscerates Innovatio's "expert" who came up with the prices it thought were reasonable, even highlighting a ridiculous exchange showing that the guy, Chris Bergey, was more or less coming up with ways to support these claims based on questionable assumptions, and no connection to how these things are normally priced.

Specifically, Mr. Bergey testified in part as follows:

Q. I'm saying you are unaware of a single case where this approach has been taken, correct?
A. Correct. I'm not well versed in patent cases.
Q. Well, what do you mean by that?
A. I ... couldn't tell you if this is something that's widely used or not widely used.
Q. You have no idea whether this approach has ever been used?
A. I do not know.
Q. Or whether it's an appropriate approach?
A. It seems logical to me, and I know that this is an emerging, you know, area of law where there is a lot of challenges, but ... I allow that to the experts and, you know--
Q. And on this issue, you're not an expert, right? Fair?
A. On which issue?
Q. On the issue of whether this is even the right approach to take.
A. Again, I think it's logical, but, you know, I think that's up to others in the case to determine, you know, what they want to use.
Q. Because you don't have any expertise or training to say yourself whether or not it's appropriate, right? You're not a lawyer, for example?
A. I believe my education allows me to say I believe it's accurate, but if it's appropriate, no, I don't believe I'm qualified.

Mr. Bergey's testimony about the methodology he used to produce the Wi-Fi feature factor confirms that his approach was not based on an established method of analysis, but is instead speculative and subjective.

The ruling is definitely a loss for Innovatio, as it massively limits the royalties it claims it's entitled to. Of course, Innovatio's lawyer, Matthew McAndrews, seems to want to turn lemons into obnoxious lemonade to spit all over everyone, arguing that now that a rate is set, he can't wait to get all that money from all those WiFi chips:

“At a minimum, the court’s determination that the Wi-Fi chip is the appropriate base to which the RAND rate applies opens the door for Innovatio to potentially license hundreds of millions of units sold by numerous Wi-Fi chip suppliers,” Matthew McAndrews, an Innovatio IP attorney, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Meanwhile, Cisco notes that (1) this much lower rate should hopefully limit the threats that Innovatio can send to users and (2) there's still a long way to go before anyone has to pay anything. Cisco's general counsel, Mark Chandler, told Bloomberg: "We would be shocked if we had to pay anything" by the time the case is over. Meanwhile, in an emailed statement, Chandler told us:

Now, instead of sending letters to businesses asking for thousands, Innovatio can send letters asking for a dime, and only if Innovatio can prove that the patents are valid and that the accused products use the WiFi features and are not already licensed – none of which they have done yet. I suggest they save the stamp.

Ouch. Of course, that's not entirely accurate, since the case is clear that it only applies to the manufacturers, and not the WiFi users, which will be discussed separately, apparently. But, given the RAND rate set for the manufacturers as a starting point, it is likely that any rate that might apply to WiFi users would also be greatly diminished from Innovatio's nutty claims. And, of course, the company still has to show that actual infringement occurred, and that is still likely to be difficult.

Filed Under: patents, rand, wifi
Companies: cisco, innovatio

Court Says Cisco Has No Right To Sue To Invalidate A Patent That Is Being Used Against Its Customers

from the that-just-seems-wrong dept

Yet another unfortunate patent decision has come out of the appeals court for the federal circuit. This involves a case where certain customers of Cisco products were being sued for patent infringement by TR Labs, and part of its argument was that certain Cisco equipment resulted in the infringement by those customers. In response, Cisco filed a lawsuit in federal court, asking for a declaratory judgment that TR Labs' patents were invalid. TR Labs hit back that it had not sued Cisco, had no intention of suing Cisco, and thus Cisco could not sue for declaratory judgment. Unfortunately, the lower courts and now the appeals court have agreed that Cisco has no basis to bring a lawsuit, because there is no direct threat against it.

There are reasons why it makes sense to require an actual potential dispute before allowing someone to bring a declaratory judgment action, but it seems silly to argue that Cisco can't file this lawsuit. After all, its business can clearly be impacted by TR Labs' lawsuits. First, it automatically makes Cisco's offerings more expensive, in that buyers may either face increased liability or direct licensing costs just to use those products. Thus, Cisco has a direct financial stake in the outcome of those lawsuits and has a very good reason to see the patents invalidated. Unfortunately, the court just doesn't think that's enough:

In the circumstances presented here, that interest is simply insufficient to give rise to a current, justiciable case or controversy upon which federal declaratory judgment jurisdiction may be predicated

Of course, a better solution all around would be to make it much easier for anyone to get bad patents thrown out, but that's just not how our patent system works, unfortunately.

Filed Under: patents, routers, third parties
Companies: cisco, tr labs

Latest Leak: NSA Can Spy On Almost Anything, Gets To Set Its Own Filters

from the and-another-shoe-drops dept

And, here we go again. This time, it's the WSJ journal with the scoop on NSA surveillance, and how the defenders of the NSA have been lying to us. Despite claims that the NSA was really only focused on foreign communications, the WSJ is reporting that it actually covers 75% of US internet traffic:

The National Security Agency—which possesses only limited legal authority to spy on U.S. citizens—has built a surveillance network that covers more Americans' Internet communications than officials have publicly disclosed, current and former officials say.

The system has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic in the hunt for foreign intelligence, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans. In some cases, it retains the written content of emails sent between citizens within the U.S. and also filters domestic phone calls made with Internet technology, these people say.

Basically, they're just revealing more details about the things that whistleblower Mark Klein revealed years ago: that the NSA has deals with the major telcos which scoop up a huge amount of internet traffic.

The programs, code-named Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium and Stormbrew, among others, filter and gather information at major telecommunications companies. Blarney, for instance, was established with AT&T Inc., former officials say. AT&T declined to comment.

This filtering takes place at more than a dozen locations at major Internet junctions in the U.S., officials say.

The WSJ report is wrong on one account, though. It claims that people believed that the NSA's filtering actually happened "where undersea or other foreign cables enter the country" but that's not true. Mark Klein made it clear that the NSA had machines directly on AT&T's property.

And, of course, it will come as no surprise that these programs that work directly with telcos to tap into full internet traffic aren't just about metadata:

...this set of programs shows the NSA has the capability to track almost anything that happens online, so long as it is covered by a broad court order.

[....] Inevitably, officials say, some U.S. Internet communications are scanned and intercepted, including both "metadata" about communications, such as the "to" and "from" lines in an email, and the contents of the communications themselves.

This also shouldn't be a surprise. For all the talk of "metadata" it was always clear that the surveillance defenders were talking about this program only, which was the Patriot Act Section 215 "business records" program. But other programs, such as these listed above, were clearly about actual content as well.

While the report does note that some "minimization" happens, there is clearly widespread ability to abuse. The system works by having the NSA telling the telcos to only send over certain traffic covering "certain areas of interest" which the NSA then "briefly copies" and decides what to keep and what to dump. Again, this is consistent with earlier reports of the NSA searching all emails that go into and out of the US.

The latest report is, again, replete with NSA doublespeak. It claims that it's not "accessing" all of this traffic, because it asks the telcos to do some of the filtering for it. That's how it gets away with talking about "things we actually touch," even though its deals with the telcos basically mean they can access almost everything.

The WSJ further reports that, while most of the requests are targeted towards foreign communications, there are times when it's quite clear that requests are likely to cover domestic communications. Some telcos apparently push back, causing "friction", while others seem to comply with no qualms, though there is no indication of which telcos fall into which camp.

The report further confirms that this program is considered "legal" by the administration thanks to a broad interpretation of the FISA Amendments Act, giving the NSA the power to snoop on people "reasonably believed" to be outside the US, rather than requiring "probable cause" that they were "an agent of a foreign power." Also, there's this:

NSA has discretion on setting its filters, and the system relies significantly on self-policing. This can result in improper collection that continues for years.

The report also claims that it was one of these "mistakes" that resulted in three years of illegal collections (much greater than the "few months" that were revealed in last week's Washington Post article).

And now we wait for another bunch of carefully worded statements from NSA defenders...

Filed Under: abuses, americans, blarney, fairbiew, filters, lithium, nsa, nsa surveillance, oakstar, spying, stormbrew
Companies: at&t, cisco, juniper, narus, verizon

Anatomy Of A Boondoggle: How The US Broadband Plan Led To WV Buying $20,000 Routers For A One Room Library

from the scam-scam-scam-scam dept

Back in 2009, we warned people that the President's mega-hyped "broadband plan" really just looked like a massive gift to large incumbent providers, who were about to get an influx of taxpayer money, which would translate into next to nothing in terms of actual broadband deployments. Indeed, we've seen an awful lot of waste happening under the program, which is finally starting to come to light. Recently, the NY Times profiled widespread waste in the program, suggesting that hundreds of millions of dollars are either being wasted or are part of various boondoggles to squeeze cash out of governments:

Nationally, $594 million in spending has been temporarily or permanently halted, 14 percent of the overall program, and the Commerce Department's inspector general has raised questions about the program's ability to adequately monitor spending of the more than 230 grants.

Perhaps nowhere are the details more apparent than in West Virginia. Ars Technica summarizes a recent report that is incredibly damning. The smoking gun? A $20,000 router installed in a one-room library the size of an ordinary trailer. But that's hardly the worst of it. At least that $20,000 router is being used (even if it's under-utilized).

Part of the reason for buying that router, rather than a cheapo one that would have sufficed, was that it would enable other services, including things like VoIP. The state bought 77 of them. Turns out that 75 are just sitting around collecting dust. And none of them can use the VoIP system they need.

Ironically, the routers can't even be used for VoIP in some key cases. The state police already have a VoIP-based phone system, but the new 3945 series routers did not come with "the appropriate Cisco VoIP modules" to work with the system. The state now has to spend another $84,768 to purchase those modules; without them, the state police can't use the routers, only two of which are actually installed and operating. (For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia.)

There's a lot of finger-pointing going on, but when it comes down to it, this is not at all surprising. Throwing billions of dollars into the broadband space with little reasoning or oversight always leads to questionable behavior. So why do we keep doing it? Are there ways the government could spend on infrastructure and have it be powerful. Sure, but the Broadband Plan clearly was not it. And we're only learning about the abuse and waste now, after the money's been spent.

Filed Under: boondoggle, broadband plan, expensive routers, routers, west virginia
Companies: cisco