Can The NSA Listen to All Youz Callz? POLL

[snooper2]

Out of curiosity let's see what the breakdown is-

3 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	The NSA has links and hooks into every telephony network/switch in existence and can listen to your conversations with a few clicks of a button
	3 (100%)
	Telecom employees with clearance have to put a Lawful Intercept in place on the switch hosting the subscriber based on a FISA or criminal warrant
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[hlthe2b]

1. How can we possibly know?

[snooper2]

2. Well first you have to know how CALEA works

For example, one has to have clearance to even be able to view the LI (lawful intercept) documentation on manufacturer switches. It's a whole seperate component on any switching system that the normal telecom employee can't even access.


Here's a the first primer one should read to begin to understand-

http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/communications-assistance-law-enforcement-act

[hlthe2b]

3. And, I am supposed to believe that description of how it works and the limitations?

That's what happens when government moves to the extremes in secrecy and when even small incidents of officials being less than fully truthful come to light. The public will (rightfully) question everything.

[snooper2]

4. Well, since I work for a phone company you can take my word

and you know what, setting up a LI is more of a pain in the fucking ass than you think it is....


Actually, you can search for yourself. Go on google and try to find any documentation from Avaya, Huawei, BroadSoft, Nortel, Siemens, Acme Packet or Metaswitch on how to enable a LI on a subscriber.

[Hatchling]

5. Tv shows

Like "Person of Interest" and all the NCIS and cop shows that show the "good guys" tappping into data banks to catch the "bad guys" are conditioning us to accept this. You notice they rarely if ever go into the necessity to get warrants for this?

And while they may not be listening in to all our calls they have the ability to do do whenever they want to.

[Junkdrawer]

6. Push poll much?

Your contempt for DUers is showing.

[snooper2]

10. contempt for people who refuse to understand the basics of telephony

They don't even want to learn, it's easier to have outrage---

[Fire Walk With Me]

7. They've been doing warrantless wiretapping since at least 2002:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022994236

[Warren Stupidity]

8. The NSA is not "wiretapping" per se.

What they are doing, and have been doing since the 70's is "hoovering" telecoms and now internet traffic into databases and then analyzing the hoovered data at their leisure. They are not, at least the NSA is not, sitting there with earphones monitoring individual calls. They have been spending tens of billions of dollars for decades building giant database systems. This is Stasi State 2.0. It is a whole different ball game.

[NightWatcher]

9. Can? Yes. Do they give a shit about 99.99% of our calls? No

They posses the ability but rarely the desire to do so.

[snooper2]

11. can you explain the technical details of how they "can"

[NightWatcher]

12. Nope.

[One_Life_To_Give]

13. You think they can't tap Putin's phone?

Lots of ways to illegally tap phone conversations. You remember the Infrared Laser beam bounced off of Secretary of Defense office window? Are we to believe that Voice Scramblers have been available and in use by security people for years but they are never needed? As a practical matter the bulk of phone calls go thru certain hubs. Those like e-mail servers can be illegally taped. Which allows for an amazing amount of data to be electronically searched. Now while listening to 50,000 simultaneous phone calls discerning which one is about a mole in the Pentagon or someone planning to Bomb a Marathon is a challenge.

By the way how many foreign intelligence services are probably also listening in around key hubs in New York or DC?

[snooper2]

14. Anything can be tapped...

You focus your resources on how/where to put certain taps. You can't just put a optical splitter on every piece of fucking fiber in the World. LOL...

I'm sure Gigamon would love that though, they would be a 10 Billion dollar company



"As a practical matter the bulk of phone calls go thru certain hubs"

Do you have any idea how many Class 4 switches exist in the World?