Uncle Sam's wire cutters

“To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Oscar Wilde.

In the span of less than a week, four major underwater telecommunications cables have been “cut”. Can you imagine being in a car wreck on Monday and the ambulance you are riding in after the wreck is also involved in a wreck and on Tuesday you wreck the rental car that the insurance company got for you and when you leave the lot with a second rental car, that one gets totaled too? Telecoms, governments and the media all want us to believe the car wreck story. That’s what they are force-feeding us when they aren’t busy trying to ignore the story.

What would be the reasons behind taking down an entire region’s communications grid in this way? There are several possibilities and I think the wilder ones could carry the most weight as this is an extraordinary set of equipment failures.

Some people are postulating that this is an opening salvo before Iran opens its oil Bourse. The latest given date for the opening is February 11th and it will be interesting to see how the communications situation is resolved and if there are other problems popping up when the Bourse opens. It is possible that the cables were taken down as a warning to not only Iran, but also the rest of the world, that their main means of operating in the modern financial world could be taken down with a moment's notice. I think this explanation carries the most weight as the timing and the “signal” of this communications outage is most prescient.

There are a few “I don’t know about that…” twists with a warning shot theory. Namely, the dollar is already being unpegged from Middle East oil producers and let’s face it, the US economy is already fucked six ways to Sunday. Sending some SEALs to the Med and the Gulf, armed with wire cutters and spare air tanks seems a bit like overkill. Then again, subtlety isn’t a trademark of the US Government.

There is also quite a bit of speculation that the outage is a byproduct of the US Government carrying out a large-scale surveillance program. I assume the NSA is capturing data streams en masse and in real time on most if not all international communications lines, so this seems less likely unless there were specific traffic routes that they had no access to. I have wondered, from an IT professional’s perspective, if the cables were cut to corner or head off a stream of communication that had the potential for damage. The idea of taking an all or nothing course of action with a dangerous communications link by cutting all traffic seems more damaging to the overall picture than helpful so I am not crazy about this idea either.

Time will tell what the real deal is behind the communications outage but we should keep in mind that if or when the shit really hits the fan here in the US we would never be able to find out in real time, from alternate sources, what has transpired. If the powers that be decide to pull the plug on our Democracy they’ll do it under the cover of night and we’ll all wake up to a glossy doll’s eyes version of the normal life we have become accustomed to. It will be as though surreal pixies remade our world overnight. The news will report that “something” has happened but we will not be privy to the reality. It will be as though someone snipped our transatlantic cables and satellite communications with the rest of the world. We will be blinded and unable to find content other than what they allow us to view. At this very moment, Iran is in that exact position.

One other thing to consider is the similarities of this outage and what ATT customers experienced during the transition periods when the NSA installed it's equipment in their COs. Add the BellSouth customers who couldn't get email when ATT "transitioned" those customers into their network and you have an interesting case study in how things don't flow when the feds snoop. To this day there are latency issues with email coming from BellSouth where looking at the header info will show an outbound email from a BellSouth customer, bouncing around like a pinball within ATT's network.

AT&T -- Ruler of airwaves. Seriously, they now own it all.

The fat cats keep getting fatter, the mega-corporations keep expanding and choices for the consumer continue to dwindle. AT&T, the behemoth that keeps on gobbling up all it sees with no interference from government agencies, has just announced a deal they have worked out with Aloha Partners that will give them access to a massive block of wireless spectrum. http://www.newratings.com/analyst_news/article_1626635.html The move will position AT&T in a way that they will now be the provider of 700Mhz for 196 million people. The deal is subject to regulatory approval but let’s face the facts, the feds are going to give AT&T anything they want.

The Chairman of the FCC, Keith Martin, has officially announced that they will not investigate AT&T on grounds that they illegally allowed the NSA to spy on Americans. The reasoning behind this is the stereotypical “National security” bullshit and lies. Of course the Telco spy scandal is a massive and multi-layered story that is being well covered by some media sources but woefully understated by the major media outlets. The old “National Security” line has been abused for a long time by the current sociopaths in DC but reports from yesterday cleared the air even more on this subject.

Remember the recent Osama Bin Laden video? The one where an obvious imposter was employed? Well, it appears that the White House once again threw intelligence national security down the toilet by releasing the video to Fox News long before giving copies to the law enforcement and intelligence agencies and in the process destroyed the network access capabilities of SITE Intelligence Group. How many fools are left to believe this administration when they have been caught so many times in lies?

This of course harkens back to the Plame affair, The Military Commissions Act of 2006, Patriot Acts I and II, the suspension of Posse Comitatus with the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007…all just a long line of enabling this administration with the keys to the nation. To return to AT&T, of course the federal agencies that oversee the Telco’s like AT&T will allow them to do whatever they wish. They are letting the NSA peer into the raw voice and data streams, unfettered. The return for this ultra risky maneuver is free run of the candy store.

What AT&T has risked is their very lifeblood. In sane times, with sane leaders and a sane judiciary; AT&T would be liable for being a part of the largest breach of privacy and un-Constitutional behavior known to the American public. Since AT&T, and the companies they have purchased since 2001, maintain almost complete control over the voice and data networks every American uses, their liability would be to virtually every American man, woman and child who has spoken on the phone, emailed or surfed the web since 2001.

The civil suits are queued up and the Telco’s are pushing the halls of Congress with a passion to get a free pass, a legal written in law pass, for their digressions against the American public and their very own customers. Yet this level of power isn’t enough. They want more power, more bandwidth and more money. The government is all too happy to comply with their desires and allow them to expand, unchecked, as long as they keep that stream open for them.
Adding to this power grab are two recent issues of censorship by AT&T. The first was a blatant editing of a live concert streamed by AT&T of the band Pearl Jam. At one point in the performance lyrics critical of President Bush were cut out. When the issue was publicly spoken about and word began to spread, AT&T, of course, blamed a contractor for censoring on content. However, a recent change to the Terms of Service that customers of AT&T must follow states that they can completely sever your communications links if at any time you criticize AT&T. In other words, this is the fallout of the Pearl Jam censorship case. AT&T has decided to kill the messenger and the message.

Every day, at every step of the way, we are being watched, analyzed and categorized by our government. They took Nineteen Eighty-Four and looked at it as a wet dream, a template, for the future. Since most of us are familiar with the story even if not all of us have read the novel, can we break their plans and refuse to be their Winston Smith?

Has the President declared the entire US population to be enemies of the state?

A significant and terrifying revelation came to light in this week’s round of testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The revelation is subtle and nuanced and a small amount of decoding is necessary to unravel its meaning, but it is there. Former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey testified that Chief of Staff Andrew Card and White House Counselor Alberto Gonzales attempted to trick then Attorney General John Ashcroft into reauthorizing a domestic eavesdropping program while he was hospitalized. This, of course, is what was widely reported but the details of that program and the reasons why it was not reauthorized is the actual story.

From statements made by government and White House officials from the President all the way down the chain of command, its obvious that they are talking on one level and we are listening on another. This is being brushed aside by many as classic Orwellian Doublespeak but what they say and how they parse their words, combined with their actions and those of the telecommunications industry point to a much more sinister and frightening reality.

First off, most people assume that the comments made by the President and various government officials about this situation are directly focused on the FISA and warrantless wiretap situation. In actuality, when they testify and comment to the press they are actually referring to other programs being run at this very moment. Let’s look at this item by item:

1) FISA – While the focus of the media, political and conspiracy theory commentators and the average citizen has been placed on FISA there are comments being made by those involved in this scandal that are obviously intended to divert our attention away from the authorization of wiretapping program that circumvented FISA. The question has been “why was FISA circumvented?” when the question should have been, “What program are you using that supersedes FISA and under what authorization?”

2) The AT&T/NSA collusion – No one in the government or the telecommunications industry wants us to know more about the authorization which forced the telcos to allow the US Intelligence Community to literally tap into all data and voice transmissions coming and going from US soil. They are attempting to hide something much deeper than what we see on the surface.

3) The program that the White House was trying to trick Ashcroft into authorizing is not FISA or the AT&T/NSA programs. Comey, Gonzales and Bush have admitted so by deflecting questions or giving misleading answers for.

4) The program that the White House sought approval for from Ashcroft was so illegal and so un-Constitutional that every person who refused to sign off on the program threatened to resign if it were authorized.

5) The details of this program are not yet known, but this much is known: the program was indeed authorized by someone and it allows for spying at levels far beyond what we are being told with sweeping powers far beyond the pale of any program in history.

The press and the rest of us make much of the President’s power grabbing exploits and the un-Constitutional aspects of these powers. One thing has been overlooked. In all cases a justification has been made for their legality by Bush neophytes even if the justification is flawed and self-serving. The actual legality and Constitutional standing of these authorizations have not been contested to date because we have not seen the documents that are allowing the programs in question. What we have seen in the form of FISA, the AT&T/NSA wiretapping and even with the torture authorization scandal are appearing to this blogger to be nothing more than a smokescreen. Something is peering from the cracks that are forming in this smokescreen.

My belief, based on Bush administration history is that there is a massive and all-encompassing surveillance program that has been authorized behind the FISA and AT&T/NSA programs that is beginning to be seen in pieces. The White House is desperate to maintain the FISA and AT&T/NSA facade but their actions and words hint that those two cases are not their central concern. Their actions and words are directed at a program that is sitting directly behind those two cases. This program, a Program X as it were, is so invasive and overwhelming that their greatest fear is that it’s existence will be known.

What could this program entail? At this point all we can do is guess but based on the issues at stake, the methods and means used and the severity of the fallout my guess is this:

The President has secretly declared that all Americans are potential enemies of the state and he has authorized all Intelligence Agencies of the federal government to monitor, classify and identify who we are. To expedite this process, all of the major telecommunications providers, the owners of the backbone, have been federalized. In other words, an undeclared and modified state of martial law is in effect. This explanation would cover the lengths the government has gone to in hiding the details of the FISA and AT&T/NSA scandals. It would also explain the curious Doublespeak being used in discussing these cases. What we see our government doing and what it really is doing are two different things. What we are allowed to know and what is easily discovered by investigative journalists are smokescreens to draw our attention away from what lies behind them.

Has ATT or the NSA broken the BellSouth email system?

For several weeks now email being delivered to BellSouth Internet customers has had serious problems with delays. Since the ATT takeover of our old "Southern Belle", the typical ATT lack of quality has seeped into the BellSouth network with surprising speed. Emails coming into the BellSouth network either disappear into the ether or are delayed for hours or even days. DNS resolution sucks as websites sometimes won't resolve but going to the IP address works. Access speeds even on DSL is erratic. And if that weren't enough we now have the ATT Death Star logo looming over the city as something to look forward to.

So, is this just a sign of the ATT bungling idiots fouling things up? Or is this the teething stage of the NSA hooking up their latest Carnivore derivative downtown in the Telco Hotels of Marietta Street? As inept as ATT is, it's hard to not blame them but we all know what ATT has let the NSA do over the past few years. Which group of idiots is wrecking the party? The corporate idiots or government idiots?