[DEBATE] : (Fwd) e-panopticon from Zim to America

[Patrick Bond]

Subject: The INTERCEPTION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS or THE ANTI-TERRORISM 
AND COMMUNICATIONS BILL is now LAW
Importance: High

STOP PRESS

 As you might have read in the papers. The INTERCEPTION OF 
TELECOMMUNICATIONS or THE ANTI-TERRORISM AND COMMUNICATIONS BILL is now 
LAW. PLEASE BE WARNED AGAINST SENDING  E-Mails as per the following, 
which is also included in our E-mail Policy:- 

Please do not:-

r       Use E-mail to campaign for political causes or candidates.

r       Use E-mail to engage in activities or transmit content that is 
harassing, discriminatory, menacing, threatening, obscene,

     defamatory or in any way objectionable or offensive.

r       Send, receive, solicit, or reply to text or images that ridicule 
or are insulting to others.

r       Spread gossip, rumours, and innuendos about anyone.

r       Send, receive, solicit, or reply to sexually oriented messages 
or images.

r       Send, receive, solicit, or reply to messages or images that 
contain foul, obscene, or adult -- oriented language.

r      Send, receive, solicit, or reply to messages or images that are 
intended to alarm others, embarrass the company/country.

 

The Mail-Marshal which will be/is installed on our Internet Service 
Providers (ISP's) Server's can easily detect these.

Stay out of trouble.

Gordon McQuoid

IS Manager

Tel Cell: 0912 315 266

     Bus: 04 754556 /9

E-mail gmcquoid at olivine.co.zw


***

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3535528

Inside DCSNet, the FBI's Nationwide Eavesdropping Network
Surveillance System Lets FBI Play Back Recordings as They Are Captured, 
Like TiVo
The surveillance system connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches 
controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony 
providers and cellular companies.  By Ryan Singel
Aug. 28

The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance 
system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications 
device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents 
newly released under the Freedom of Information Act.

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The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System 
Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by 
traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and 
cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's 
telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.

It's a "comprehensive wiretap system that intercepts wire-line phones, 
cellular phones, SMS and push-to-talk systems," says Steven Bellovin, a 
Columbia University computer science professor and longtime surveillance 
expert.


DCSNet is a suite of software that collects, sifts and stores phone 
numbers, phone calls and text messages. The system directly connects FBI 
wiretapping outposts around the country to a far-reaching private 
communications network.

Many of the details of the system and its full capabilities were 
redacted from the documents acquired by the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, but they show that DCSNet includes at least three collection 
components, each running on Windows-based computers.

The $10 million DCS-3000 client, also known as Red Hook, handles 
pen-registers and trap-and-traces, a type of surveillance that collects 
signaling information -- primarily the numbers dialed from a telephone 
-- but no communications content. (Pen registers record outgoing calls; 
trap-and-traces record incoming calls.)

DCS-6000, known as Digital Storm, captures and collects the content of 
phone calls and text messages for full wiretap orders.

A third, classified system, called DCS-5000, is used for wiretaps 
targeting spies or terrorists.

What DCSNet Can Do

Together, the surveillance systems let FBI agents play back recordings 
even as they are being captured (like TiVo), create master wiretap 
files, send digital recordings to translators, track the rough location 
of targets in real time using cell-tower information, and even stream 
intercepts outward to mobile surveillance vans.

FBI wiretapping rooms in field offices and undercover locations around 
the country are connected through a private, encrypted backbone that is 
separated from the internet. Sprint runs it on the government's behalf.

The network allows an FBI agent in New York, for example, to remotely 
set up a wiretap on a cell phone based in Sacramento, California, and 
immediately learn the phone's location, then begin receiving 
conversations, text messages and voicemail pass codes in New York. With 
a few keystrokes, the agent can route the recordings to language 
specialists for translation.

The numbers dialed are automatically sent to FBI analysts trained to 
interpret phone-call patterns, and are transferred nightly, by external 
storage devices, to the bureau's Telephone Application Database, where 
they're subjected to a type of data mining called link analysis.

FBI endpoints on DCSNet have swelled over the years, from 20 "central 
monitoring plants" at the program's inception, to 57 in 2005, according 
to undated pages in the released documents. By 2002, those endpoints 
connected to more than 350 switches.

Today, most carriers maintain their own central hub, called a "mediation 
switch," that's networked to all the individual switches owned by that 
carrier, according to the FBI. The FBI's DCS software links to those 
mediation switches over the internet, likely using an encrypted VPN. 
Some carriers run the mediation switch themselves, while others pay 
companies like VeriSign to handle the whole wiretapping process for them.

Full: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3535528