Government access to private communications

[Alan Firminger]

Nacchio was an executive in Qwest Communications. He realised that Qwest involvement in telephone tapping was illegal under US federal law, so he sold his shares and quit. The US government has taken him to court for insider trading. You can't make it up.

My purpose here is to publicise the article in Salon that yields a pdf that will make your hair stand on end. This is the article :
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/ 2007/10/15/amnesty/ . And this is the evidence : http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/pdf/business/nacchio/101007cipa/ci pa2.pdf .

I have to tell you how the technology works. Wikipedia is helpful but incomplete, here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_communications_cable .

There is a concept in telecommunications called 'transmission' . This comprises fibre optic links into each of which data is multiplexed. The transatlantic cable TAT-14 puts 150 Gigabit/sec through one fibre, and there are two fibres in two directions. To understand this a telephone link needs 10 Kbit/sec .

International links are put through the sea to avoid giving intermediate nations a lock on them. Within a nation its own links run everywhere.

All this data traffic potential is split into chunks which are sold to commercial users, the telephone companies who use it for speech, manufacturers use it for sharing all their data, TV companies send their programmes, internet providers send our data and emails. All done by selling block capacity of any size as wanted by the customer.

The plan described from 2001 was to build another global network using block capacity so that another US government agency could access the node computers to suck up anything it wanted as voice, internet or company data and pass it home through its own channels. I get a chill in my spine.

In the UK our protection laws are non existent. We are a monarchy and the monarch can do anything in his or her country, powers are delegated to the prime minister who is also head of the secret services.

Sleep well.