Intel Officials' Claims That NSA Couldn't Access Majority Of Cellphone Records Apparently Bogus

from the misrepresenting-the-haul dept

The recent Snowden documents published by the New York Times and ProPublica confirm the close relationship between AT&T and the NSA, which would explain the deafening silence the company issued in response to the first few months of leaks. (Such "partnerships" likely exist with Verizon and other providers, although nothing has been directly confirmed by leaked documents, and such partnerships may have done a bit of "dissolving" shortly after the leaks began.)

But the documents also highlighted the difference between what NSA officials claimed they were getting and what they were actually getting from telcos. In early 2014, officials claimed they were only obtaining between 20-30% of domestic call records. According to unnamed "current and former officials," the explosion of cellphone use was leaving the NSA's bulk collection programs in the dust.

These documents show there's a huge discrepancy between the unofficial "official" statements and the NSA's actual capabilities, as the ACLU's Kade Crockford points out.

The New York Times reports on documents disclosed by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden:

"In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans’ phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records."

I must quibble a bit with the New York Times excellent reporting here, only to suggest that what's "striking" about the discrepancy between what journalists reported and the truth isn't the fact that the NSA would lie to journalists. What's striking is that journalists continue to print official, often anonymous claims about government surveillance programs without a shred of evidence that those claims are true.

This has long been the problem with journalists' reliance on "unnamed government sources." Without a name to attach the statement to, no one can be held accountable for lying to the American public. While many sources would not comment at all without the protection of anonymity, the statements issued are seldom questioned by entities with an obligation to challenge anonymous assertions.

On the other hand, emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler points out these claims may have an element of truth, but only because Snowden's leaks and problematic cell location data (which isn't specifically covered by Section 215) was preventing the agency from collecting all it wanted to, or perhaps all it used to.

We know from the Congressional notice AT&T was willing to strip [location data]. For a lot of reasons, it’s likely Verizon was unwilling to strip it.

This is one of the possible explanations I’ve posited for why NSA wasn’t getting cell data from Verizon, because any provider is only obliged to give business records they already have on hand, and it would be fairly easy to claim stripping the cell location data made it a new business record.

Which is another important piece of evidence for the case made against AT&T in the story. They were willing to play with records they were handing over to the government in ways not required by the law.

Though who knows if that remain(ed) the case? To get to the 30% figure quoted in all the pieces claiming NSA wasn’t getting cell data, you’d probably have to have AT&T excluded as well. So maybe after the Snowden releases, they, too, refused to do things they weren’t required to do by law...

So, it could very well be that the NSA wasn't getting all the cell records it wanted to, making these claims mostly factual. But the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both attribute quotes to "former officials" as well, which would include officials in place prior to the Snowden leaks. If the leaks resulted in a sudden reluctance to provide these records, it would only have occurred after June 2013. The questionable statements were made in the first few months of 2014. That's not much of a gap, especially if former officials are speaking from their personal experience.

Maybe the NSA was only getting 20-30% of what it was seeking. Or maybe it only wanted to give that impression. Nothing about the statements reflect a sudden downturn in collections. Instead, they portray it as an ongoing problem. The underlying issue is the secrecy of surveillance programs, which leads to statements that can't be confirmed (or refuted) until evidence is provided. And these officials aren't going to hand out this info. It has to come from whistleblowers and leakers. The government can skate by on lies and misperceptions, especially when national security is involved.

Filed Under: lies, metadata, mobile phones, nsa, partnership, phone records, section 215, surveillance
Companies: at&t

New Leaks Confirm AT&T's Position As NSA's Favorite Telco 'Partner'

from the NSA-and-AT&T,-sittin'-on-a-trunk,-s-u-r-v-e-i-l-l-i-n-g dept

We've written before about AT&T's snuggly relationship with intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Not satisfied with being super-responsive to their demands, the telco provider has made proactive efforts over the years to ensure these entities get what they want when they want it... if not sooner.

New documents released by ProPublica shed some more light to the extent of the NSA and AT&T's relationship. It goes far beyond phone metadata and cell site location info. It covers plenty of internet traffic as well. [Full disclosure: AT&T is my cell phone provider. Goddammit.]

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the NSA access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

A collection of slides explaining the NSA's AT&T-only FAIRVIEW program notes it uses a "corporate partner" to obtain email, VOIP and cloud service data as it rolls off international cables, basically confirming speculation that the NSA has access to the internet "backbone."


The documents do point out that certain minimization filters are in place to ensure only foreign-to-foreign communications are intercepted, but apparently -- as would be the case with any collection of this scope -- the occasional "domestic incident" occurs.

The program dates back to 1985, long before President Bush tore up the existing rulebooks to facilitate the NSA's easy access to communications and data -- something AT&T cheerily signed onto immediately after the 9/11 attacks.

AT&T began turning over emails and phone calls “within days” after the warrantless surveillance began in October 2001, the report indicated. By contrast, the other company did not start until February 2002, the draft report said.

With the mechanisms for snagging massive amounts of internet traffic already in place, all AT&T and the NSA had to do was wait for the internet to start filling its surveillance net.

In September 2003, according to the previously undisclosed NSA documents, AT&T was the first partner to turn on a new collection capability that the NSA said amounted to a “‘live’ presence on the global net.” In one of its first months of operation, the Fairview program forwarded to the agency 400 billion Internet metadata records — which include who contacted whom and other details, but not what they said — and was “forwarding more than one million emails a day to the keyword selection system” at the agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

While the slideshow appears to show the NSA has access to AT&T's routing hubs themselves, other documents seem to dispute this claim. A 2012 presentation quoted by ProPublica notes that it has something that seems to work just as efficiently: AT&T itself.

[T]he spy agency does not “typically” have “direct access” to telecoms’ hubs. Instead, the telecoms have done the sifting and forwarded messages the government believes it may legally collect.

Of course, there's a hedge in there that may actually indicate the opposite: "typically." Atypical collections occur, apparently, which could mean the NSA does have backbone access. It could be that its backbone access through AT&T is a bit more limited than intercepts it has elsewhere, or that it performs some of this harvesting prior to the data/communications reaching domestic corporate hubs. Either way, it's definitely not a denial of any sort. But this proactive forwarding system still has its limitations.

“Corporate sites are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to NSA,” according to the presentation. This system sometimes leads to “delays” when the government sends new instructions, it added.

These "delays" appear to be what led to the direct "embedding" of AT&T employees with government agencies in order to expedite processing of requests. Further expeditious service was allegedly provided by agents occupying secret rooms in AT&T data centers, which allowed surveillance to be performed in near real time. On top of this, the FBI also unofficially partnered with AT&T to access records using nothing more official than a Post-It note with search parameters written on it.

The documents point out the collections are performed under a variety of legal authorities, even though technically, they're not really "collections" -- not with AT&T pushing records forward rather than simply replying to court orders, NSLs or any other legal paperwork. Of course, the largest piece of the "collection" -- foreign-to-foreign communications -- is subject to no legal limitations whatsoever. Add this to everything AT&T's literal "backroom" deal with the government was already generating and the amount of data and communications turned over to the spy agency under a handful of loose legal authorities is breathtaking (from a 2011 NSA document):

This new metadata flow is associated with a cell phone provider and will generate an estimated 1.1 billion cellular records a day in addition to the 700M records delivered currently under the BR FISA.

Is AT&T still this proactive, post-Snowden? It doesn't appear to be, at least not if you take the single comment provided to ProPublica at face value.

“We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence,” Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman, said.

Burns didn't elaborate, so it's impossible to say if this only affects certain domestic communications or has a broader impact than just this small sliver of the NSA's total haul.

The documents show that the NSA is very appreciative of AT&T's willingness to go above and beyond what is legally required ("extreme willingness to help," making it probably the first time anyone has praised the company for its customer service skills.

Has anybody else in history ever encountered an "extreme willingness to help" from a phone company?

— Parker Higgins (@xor) August 15, 2015

I guess it all depends on who the customer is.

Filed Under: backbone, mass surveillance, nsa, partnership, surveillance
Companies: at&t

US Patent Office Seeking 'Partnership' With Software Community, Hoping To 'Enhance Quality Of Software Patents'

from the is-that-a-want-ad? dept

In what looks sort of like a government dating ad, the US Patent Office has announced that it's seeking a "software partnership" with the software community, with the goal of "enhancing the quality of software-related patents." To translate: "please come to hear us speak, because we're kind of annoyed that basically everyone who works in software hates patents and thinks software patents are pure evil." This process is kicking off with some roundtable discussions in Silicon Valley and New York City. Unfortunately, the parameters for the roundtable seem fairly limited already:

For these initial roundtable events, this notice sets forth several topics to begin the Software Partnership discussion. The first topic relates to how to improve clarity of claim boundaries that define the scope of patent protection for claims that use functional language. The second topic requests that the public identify additional topics for future discussion by the Software Partnership. The third topic relates to a forthcoming Request for Comments on Preparation of Patent Applications and offers an opportunity for oral presentations on the Request for Comments at the Silicon Valley and New York City roundtable events.

Those are important issues, but it shows where the USPTO is starting from, and it's not about taking a wider look at issues related to software patents, but looking for ways to patch up some of the symptoms of the larger problem. It's good that they're looking to have this discussion, but it seems like a better first step would be to really hold an open discussion first, to hear more of the concerns of software holders.

Filed Under: partnership, patents, software patents, uspto

Instead Of Nasty Lawsuit Against Counterfeiter... Why Not Look At Partnership Opportunities?

from the not-everything-needs-a-lawsuit dept

It's all too common for IP lawyers to go to the legal nastygram first, rather than recognizing that perhaps the "infringement" is an opportunity. Take, for example, this (amusing) story about how when Prada, the famous design company, first got started, Miuccia Prada got angry about someone making knockoff products. Except... rather than sue Patrizio Bertelli, who was making the knockoffs, she was convinced by him to make use of his manufacturing capabilities, and the two teamed up... even to the point of eventually getting married to each other. Obviously, that's a pretty extreme example, but the key point is worth repeating: sometimes the better solution is not to freak out and sue over infringement, but to see if that infringement can be used to your advantage.

Filed Under: counterfeiting, infringement, opportunity, partnership
Companies: prada