The latest unhinged outburst from the Internet’s most notorious sock-puppeteer is set off by a House GOP video entitled “America is at Risk,” which criticizes House Democrats for letting the Protect America Act expire:
Impressively, the ad dramatically packs every component of GOP politics into one minute: There are dark, primitively omnipotent Arab Terrorists lurking darkly and menacingly, planning to slaughter you and your whole entire family right now. You have only a few seconds to live, literally or metaphorically. The clock on your life is counting down right now. You are in severe danger.
The key word there is the first one.  The ad clearly strikes a nerve with Rick Ellensberg, who feels compelled to attack the messengers:
It stars Admiral Mike McConnell, the telecom industry’s personal cabinet member and a completely apolitical, trustworthy government official, even though he was appointed by and reports to George W. Bush and has been caught lying in the past about our intelligence programs and hysterically hyping Terrorist threats for base political gain. But when he speaks, on Fox, that is Objective Authority warning us that we will all be dead — and soon — unless we give in to every one of the Leader’s demands.
The ad also features a convincing cameo by Democrat Jay Rockefeller, in the role normally played by Dick Cheney, warning in stern, Serious, forehead-scrunched, paternal tones that we’re all going to die soon without his bill.
I left the links in because — as is so often the case when Ellers reaches a full boil — they do not really support what he is writing. The closest he gets to reality is that Adm. McConnell did incorrectly say that the PAA helped uncover a recent terror plot in Germany, publicly correcting himself when the error was brought to his attention.
The “hysterical hype” here is coming from Wilson, as the Washington Post article he links shows how uncontroversial McConnell’s actions have been following rulings from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in March and May 2007, which for the first time challenged for the first time the government’s ability to collect data from such wires even when they came from foreign terrorist targets:
The decisions had the immediate practical effect of forcing the NSA to laboriously ask judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court each time it wanted to capture such foreign communications from a wire or fiber on U.S. soil, a task so time-consuming that a backlog developed. “We shoved a lot of warrants at the court” but still could not keep up, the official said. “We needed thousands of warrants, but the most we could do was hundreds.” The official depicted it as an especially “big problem” by the end of May, in which the NSA was “losing capability.”
***
McConnell and other officials ultimately briefed about 250 lawmakers on the issue and encountered little resistance to their proposed repair for surveillance involving purely foreign communications.
***
A critical moment for the Democrats came on July 24, when McConnell met in a closed session with senators from both parties to ask for urgent approval of a slimmed-down version of his bill. Armed with new details about terrorist activity and an alarming decline in U.S. eavesdropping capabilities, he argued that Congress had days, not weeks, to act.
“Everybody who heard him speak recognized the absolute, compelling necessity to move,” Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), vice chairman of the intelligence panel, said later of the closed session.
Democrats agreed. “At that time, the discussion changed to ‘What can we do to close the gap during the August recess?’ ” said a senior Democratic aide who declined to be identified because the meetings were classified. As delivered by McConnell, the warnings were seen as fully credible. “He’s pushing this because he thinks we’re in a high-threat environment,” the senior aide said.
(Incidentally, the new FIS court rulings are why it is incorrect to suggest that the prior FISA amendments are sufficient, but I digress.)
In sarcastically referring to Adm. McConnell as a “completely apolitical, trustworthy government official, even though he was appointed by and reports to George W. Bush,” Ellers fails to link to McConnell’s bio, perhaps because it shows the man was Director of the National Security Agency for Bill Clinton — an inconvenient truth to someone who wants to smear McConnell as a partisan hack.
Not that having served Bill Clinton would excuse Adm. McConnell in Gleenland. After all, on this issue, Ellers McEllerson sees Sen. Rockefeller, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as part of the vast conspiracy to enslave the American people. His sarcasm on that occasion is telling:
In the Beltway world, anyone who aggressively objects to the Bush administration’s extremism, and especially its lawbreaking, is always guilty of (at least) one of two sins: they are either fringe, unSerious, overly earnest losers, or — as in the case with the accusations against (Sen. Christopher) Dodd here — simply pretending to be bothered by such things in order to rouse the rabble and exploit them for cynical political gain. Anyone who disrupts Beltway harmony in order to hold the Bush administration accountable — anyone who seems actually bothered by the rampant lawbreaking — is thus easily dismissed as an annoying radical or a self-promoting fraud.
After all, it can’t possibly be the case that Dodd actually believes in what he’s doing and saying. He can’t really care if telecoms are protected from the consequences of their years of deliberate, highly profitable lawbreaking. Clearly, Dodd’s just doing all of this to prop up his flagging presidential campaign…
Actually, some might suggest that inside or outside the Beltway, those taking a position on a national security position further to the left than Sens. Rockefeller and Reid might well be the definition of fringe, unSerious, overly earnest losers.
Incidentally, Gleen(s) wrote that last quoted bit on December 21, 2007, the same day that he sent out an e-mail trying to raise money for Dodd’s presidential campaign — a fact Gleen(s) apparently felt no need to disclose to his readers as he pooh-poohed the notion that Dodd could be playing to the nutroots for donations.
What is with those gay links? Seriously. I don’t need purple links polluting my otherwise aesthetically perfect Protein Wisdom experience.
Hahahaha! He split an infinitive, too.
You should have entitled it: “Glenn Greenwald(s) in a Nutshell, which is the kind of shell that naturally they ought to be in.”
I guess now i can resume my phone calls overseas, no?
Since the “Protect America” expired.
Was something stopping you from calling overseas, sashal?
…highly profitable lawbreaking? Do people actually believe this shit?
Yes,Pablo, my calls to my ex- are very explicit, at least now “they” will have to get a warrant 3 days after
if they would like to get even more excitement from listening to my calls.
Um, sashal, they can still listen in on your calls if they really want. They just can’t do it from a station in the US.
Mona never gets tired of the overwraught prose. Isn’t there an exposé on Sau Paulo bathhouses that the SockPuppeteer would be better suited for?
I suspect the phrase “listening in” is a bit outdated in this context, sashal. Besides, what do you have against voyeurs, anyway?
To correct B Moe, Glen’s charge of profiteering is based upon the fact that the telecoms charge the govt for complying. Also, it’s based on the Qwest’s allegation that after they declined to cooperate, the government awarded contracts to other telecom carriers and indicted Qwest’s CEO/founder. Personally, I can see the first allegation, but the latter charges ring hollow, since that guy was corrupt and got what was coming to him.
With regards to Mr. McConnell, it’s pretty well-documented that the last time this issue came up (in Augist of 2007), he met with Congressional leaders and scared the bejesus out of them with dire threats of imminent attacks (which you might notice did not happen*). He tried the same thing this time too, AFTER he did an interview with NPR where he told Renee Montiange that the main issue was private liability.
He made that statement, which I will helpfully append to the end, after acknowledging the essential bullshit that is the House Republicans ad, Karls’s criticism of Bush, and the commenters’ slavish love for government surveillance, i.e. THERE IS NO RUSH. The warrantless authorizations they already have don’t expire for a year! No one they were listening to last week isn’t being listened to today.
They are playing the American people and, specifically, the kind of people who are terrified of the Muslim suicide bomber hiding in the shrubbery, for fools.
Does FISA need amended to catch up with technology? Sure does. It’s why the House passed a bill already and the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a bill to the floor amending FISA. Do telecoms need immunity? Reasonable people can disagree. Is telecom immunity in any way relevant to changing FISA? Only if you are a telecom lobbyist, a Bush administration official, Jay Rockerfeller, or the writers for this site.
Whatever difficulty Karl had with Glen before, Glen is mostly right on this issue.
Here’s Mikey quote: Michael McConnell: Well, Renee it’s a very complex issue. It’s true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time-frame. However, that’s not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19072207
*By the way, given the “terror plots” the Bushies have already broken up (6 homeless guys in Florida, a five year old plan to attack LA, etc), is there a true reasonable person who imagines they wouldn’t have crowed about their August success….had there been one. The absence of that crowing and attributing its success to the PAA is pretty solid evidence that Mr. McConnell exaggerated the threat to Congress in August. I am sure, however, that there are no reasonable people who will respond to this.
Balls.
It is worth going back to basics on this.
There exist in the world organizations known by the acronym “PTT” — Post, Telephone, and Telegraph. Unspoken, but part of the definition, is that they are Government organizations. The vast majority of them are greedy bloodsuckers on a scale the old AT&T could only dream of becoming; they typically set their rates so high as to effectively restrict telephone service to Government and the highest levels of the oligarchy, then multiply those by ten for international service — even (perhaps especially) when the “international” refers to two Duck Soup regimes adjacent to one another and with populations equal to, say, Maryland or less. Marx Brothers governments aren’t necessary for the effect, though; one of the worst offenders in that respect is the Bundespost of Germany.
The United States doesn’t have a PTT; Hell, it doesn’t even have a “P” any more, by the accustomed definition. US telecoms are extremely competitive and offer lots of service at very low rates. The result of that is that they get lots of business, and that results in them being able to negotiate low rates for calls into and out of countries with rapacious PTTs. And that, in turn, means that if somebody in Pissovia wants to call somebody else in Crapistan — twenty kilometers away as the crow flies — it is quite often cheaper by a factor of ten or better to route the call via the United States, usually New York.
Note the word “route”, used instead of “connect”. A modern telephone system does not “connect” anybody. The local switch (which may be a cell phone tower or a building with computers in connected by wires) breaks the call into packets and sends the packets by the cheapest route. There is no “connection”. Each packet has a header that tells the whole system where it’s supposed to go. As the packet arrives at a switch, the switch decides where it is to go next based on the header and its “routing table”, which ranks other subsystems according to how they are connected. Often enough, the “next” is another switch, because it is very likely that it is faster to send the packet to a switch that has a better or more direct connection to the destination than it is to look for a more direct route. Internal data within the packet tells the destination switch how to put the packets back together in sequence, then convert that data back into something that sounds like voice. The switches in the route don’t give a damn about that. Switch A sees a destination header and says, “Hmm. I don’t know how to get that to where it’s going, but according to my routing table Switch X might, so I’ll send it to X.” This can get extremely silly — there’s a very good chance that X’s best route to Crapistan goes back down the same cable to Possovia, whereupon the switch in Pissovia sends the packet to Crapistan. But that’s what a greedy tax regime will do to you when there’s competition elsewhere.
What Greenwald(s) and Dodd(erer) have succeeded in doing is defining the switches as “U.S. Persons” under FISA. Switches A and X are probably both in the U.S.; in fact, it’s fairly likely that they’re next to one another in the equipment rack. So A doesn’t have a fast route to Crapistan, and sends the packet to switch X. By Greenwald(s) “logic” this is a “call” between “U.S. Persons” and requires a warrant to intercept the packet — and since both switch A and switch X are “U.S. Persons”, a warrant is also required to intercept the packet when it arrives from Pissovia and/or departs to Crapistan.
Not only that, remember that the packet header doesn’t tell the switch which packet goes where in the “call”. It is necessary to examine the packet to discover the sequencing information before you can find that out. Actually, it’s worse than that. The routing header doesn’t tell the switch what the ultimate terminus of the call will be — that is, you can’t tell from the public header which telephones the call is to or from; the origin and destination switches know, and take care of it when they digitize and reconstitute the voice data, but nothing else in the system knows or cares. What that means is that it’s necessary to decode the packet in order to find out who the call is to and from, and that constitutes “wiretapping” under the Greenwaldian definition. It is, after all, “intercepting” the “content” of the call!
So all the sanctimonious blather is based on concepts that haven’t been even useful in thinking about a “telephone call” for twenty years or better. The Fifties-era picture of an unshaven nerd with big headphones, sitting in front of a patch panel with a big tape recorder turning slowly above it, is as obsolete as the Lusitania, and mental images of “wiretapping” based on it are not only completely wrong, they are (I think deliberately) disruptive and wrongheaded. It fits perfectly the old saying: “If the law says that, the law is an ass.” Written and interpreted by asses, as well, IMO.
Regards,
Ric
Okay . . . but are there as many switches as, say, Gluppets?
Thanks for that, Ric. It’s useful to know something detailed about it, especially if you can understand it. It’d be nice to get a GUT of communications as applies to FISA, rather than the sort of onion-peeling exercise we mostly get, at least when we’re consulting people who know what they’re talking about.
You sound as if you do. I mean, seriously, who could make something like that up?
And, yes, I agree with your last few comments to the effect that the terminology used might as well be Olde Englisch, as far as useful terminology is concerned. Glenns and the Pulitzer-prizewinning NYT journalists like to sling around terms like “eavesdropping” and “wiretapping” as if they meant anything at all useful in this context, which of course they don’t.
I;m thinking of Gene Hackman in The Conversation, as an icon for “eavesdropping”.
I see Gleen falling into the self-promoting fraud category. The ends justify the means for him and the dishonesty in his posts do not matter in the service of his cause. From a comment he wrote on his blog on December 2, 2006:
“There are some people who treat our conflicts with the Bush administration and their followers as just a matter of basic, friendly political and policy differences – along the lines of “what should the rate of capital gains tax be?” or “what type of laws can best encourage employers to provide more benefits to their employees” – and therefore, we treat people who support the administration with respect and civility and simply have nice, clean discussions to sort out our differences among well-intentioned people.
That isn’t how I see that, and nobody should come to this blog expecting that. I don’t think I’ve done anything to lead anyone to expect otherwise. I see the Bush movement and its various component parts as a plague and a threat, as anything but well-intentioned. My goal, politically speaking, is to do what I can to undermine it and the institutions that have both supported and enabled it.”
I am sure, however, that there are no reasonable people who will respond to this.
Horse puckey … You just continue to make blanket assertions, and dismiss any response out of hand. Note that Ric, again, outlines in breath taking detail how this process works, and the absolute perfidy of the likes of the Gleens in perpetuating this campaign.
Oh, it gets sillier, Slart.
The destination part of a packet address is 48 bits. If the “call” is coming in on a fiber-optic line, it’s doing so at 1 gigabit per second, which means it’s there and gone in 48 nanoseconds. The switch is in two parts: what you might call the receiving-and-deciding part, and the actual switch matrix. In principle, the switch’s receiving-and-deciding circuitry has 48 nanoseconds to look up that header in its table and decide which connection to make.
It can’t do that, so the packet is duplicated, and one part of it goes through a “delay line” that stores it long enough for the switch to read the other duplicate and make its decision. The people who make switches are continually trying to make the decision part faster, but the state of the art nowadays is a few tens of microseconds. And that’s the point where you have to decide whether a warrant is necessary or not — you have to decode enough of the packet to know where the call is from/going while the switch is deciding what route to use. Fifty microseconds is not a long time for a judge to make that decision.
Back in the Good Old Days it was done by timing. There would be a mark, followed by N packets, and all the switches in the “circuit” would know that, say, packet number 7 goes to switch A, then X, then onward… a “virtual circuit” that was set up and torn down for each call (and sometimes changed in the middle, but that doesn’t matter.) That’s the concept FISA was written around; it is, conceptually, the same as having a wire between the two parties — the call doesn’t get a dedicated wire, but it does get a dedicated time slot. Trying to use the traffic regulations for horse-drawn carriages to manage landings and takeoffs at the airport is just silly.
Regards,
Ric
Also, it’s based on the Qwest’s allegation that after they declined to cooperate, the government awarded contracts to other telecom carriers and indicted Qwest’s CEO/founder. Personally, I can see the first allegation, but the latter charges ring hollow, since that guy was corrupt and got what was coming to him.
But not corrupt enough to take his share of that mad government spy money. If I was a Qwest shareholder I would sue.
Ric–
Would you care to put together a guest post on this, interdigitating the technical aspects with Gleen’s nonsense?
I second Dan’s request. The understanding of the technological differences between 1978 and today are quite revealing (as well as damning.)
It’s also clear that these lefties have never worked for a business (or been involved with a business at a high enough level to be affected) targeted by attack lawyers in frivolous litigation. The time and expense of responding and defense can be staggering, which is often exactly what the lawyers are counting on, because after all, they are frequently just looking for a quick payday. The freaking lefties have no clues about those dynamics.
yes, I love this. shorter Gleens “Anyone that doesn’t agree with me (even though they’ve had classified intelligence briefings) is wrong.”
You right-wingers are just jealous of the fact that after only nine months of blogging, Gleen Gouldwald won the Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto Film Festival. That, and something about newspapers and Russ Feingold. Jerks.
Dan, I actually would like to see Rick’s comment to Glenn’s posts about FISA , right there at the Salon.
I would love to see the discussion which will ensue
Since I am not nearly as clever or glib as many of the regular posters here, I will simply say,
“Sean M., that is some funny shit right there!”
IJS of course has no access to the classified info that people like Jay Rockefeller do, and thus is in no position to opine about the credibility of various threats (e.g., perhaps the reason attacks did not happen was that they were foiled). If IJS thinks the US brags about every ilntell success — when one may be related to ongoing efforts that require secrecy — he is fooling himself, but not others.
IJS is also misleading about the authority extending for a year. Pre-existing warrants for identified terrorist groups extends for a year. Other authority does not. This is why Rockefeller is publicly saying our capability is degrading now.
We definitely need that tech post from Ric. If for no other reason than Gleen(s) will have to launch, yet another, Kansas City Shuffle (this one with “Jazz Hands”), or turn into Phil Hartman’s “Caveman Lawyer.”
“Me no understand your packets, switches, and gigamatools.”
Thirded, fourth-th, and fifth-th.
I left the links in because  as is so often the case when Ellers reaches a full boil  they do not really support what he is writing.
This is so true – his links are so laughable and retarded. Full boil dummy links are as predictable as Mona’s post subject will be a mirror of Socks! Any betters?
The time and expense of responding and defense can be staggering, which is often exactly what the lawyers are counting on, because after all, they are frequently just looking for a quick payday. The freaking lefties have no clues about those dynamics
Settlement is the goal.
Any defense lawyer worth their salt will outline this to a client – here’s what you will pay to defend yourself pre-trial and here’s what you will pay if it goes to trial. They do the math and it becomes evident that it’s just a shakedown. Might as well just pay ‘certain” amount and settle regardless if your right or haven’t done anything wrong.
It’s also evident that lawyers have screwed up this country and there needs to be great reform.
Looser pays all – and by looser I mean every lawyer who brings a cause of action and if action gets dismissed or they loose or whatever, they pay. They pay all defendant’s legal fees and court costs period.
See, I wonder if that system were in place would all these greedy “plaintiffs’ going after telecoms (you can replace that with class-actions too) would take the risk? Not a chance.
If for no other reason than Gleen(s) will have to launch, yet another, Kansas City Shuffle (this one with “Jazz Handsâ€Â), or turn into Phil Hartman’s “Caveman Lawyer.â€Â
Glenns: Look, I’m only a caveman. Your world confuses and frightens me.
Ellers: Whenever I’m at my beach-house and I get a call on my Blackberry, I think, “Is there a tiny demon inside this little box that is making these noises?”
Ellensberg: And when I get on a plane to Brazil, or Thailand, or Key West, I think, “Am I riding in the belly of a giant metal bird of some kind?” I don’t know. I’m only a caveman.
Ellison: But, ladies and gentlemen who read Salon, I do know one thing. When George Bush says we should intercept phone calls to and from terrorists, what he’s really doing is personally listening in with headphones to phone calls between opposition Democrats and their drug dealers and prostitutes. And that, my friends, is domestic spying on Americans. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Bwahahaha, BBR!
Oh. And this is just me getting it off my chest, but no one has really mentioned this…Specter’s little idea of substituting the Government in place of the Telecoms? I hate political a-holes like this who think the peons don’t know that “government” means American taxpayer and also a-holes who don’t think twice about expecting taxpayers foot the bill.
If big lawsuits against they government were conveyed this way – So and so is suing the American Taxpayer (instead of the agency) people wouldn’t be so hip to the
shakedown artiststrail lawyers shenanigans.I don’t think Ric mentioned this, but the packets that constitute a call don’t necessarily have to follow the same route to Crapistan. Some of them could go through the U.S. and then to Pissovia and back to Crapistan. Others might go through East Greenwaldia first, then to Pissovia, etc.
It’s all completely asynchronous and connectionless.
And that spells trouble with a capital T.
Ric —
If you can, please do compose a post using the technical aspects you’ve outlined. If you wish, you can even tie it to the various FISA definitions for “electronic surveillance” (though I’ve pointed out on numerous occasions that no “wires” are involved — you can do so with technical detail) and what constitutes “in the US” (as opposed to, say, in space. One debate seems to be over where the signal is actually a signal — at a switch, or floating through the air in bits and bites).
Greenwald (and Mona) are two of the most consistently dishonest bloggers around. Which, as daley points out above — and as I’ve pointed out elsewhere (do a search for “on Patriotism” and you’ll find several examples) — means they have no desire to argue any of these questions on the merits. Their intent is to cover everything with the patina of illegality, to keep up the pressure of those indictments in order to galvanize opposition from useful idiots, and then to wrest concessions out of those whose policies they wish to see weakened or watered down, with the long-term goal being to attract power to themselves (now, it’s through the courts. But as Woodrow Wilson and FDR have shown us, progressives, when they control the executive, are not averse to a true “unitary executive,” one enforced by high-minded sounding goon squads whose purpose it is to quash dissent and weaken individualism to the point of extinction as a matter of substantive policy). They use the law like postmodernists “use” language — in the service of creating and reinforcing their own interpretive truths — “truths” they cynically know to be rather pragmatic assertions open to constant erasure under different contexts.
So, yeah. Have at it.
Me, I’ll be at seminars all weekend for Krav. But I’d love to read such a post, and I’d do everything I could to make sure it was widely linked.
I’d also call sashal’s bluff and post the entirety of any such post in the comments at Mona’s and Greenwald’s sites, then watch the idiotic, dithering, or misdirective replies come pouring in until such time that Mona declares you not worth arguing with, and Greenwald posts several updates misrepresenting what you’re saying, then proving that strawman wrong with a series of links that don’t assert what he claims they do.
Hilarity ensues.
Be careful with your backhorn, Jeff.
TSK9 – I should have said the only freaking lefties who have a clue about how the legal shakedown racket works are the scummy trial lawyers, which is why they relentlessly fund democratic lawmakers year after year in an effort to perpetuate the existing system and avoid reform.
Jeff & Dan,
I’ll see what I can do this weekend. I have now spent about as much time as I have available; I still have a consultant report (and billing, for which I get *gasp choke* paid) to do.
One of the real problems with anything like that is that Greenberg(s) don’t really align their “arguments” with the technical issues; they’re simply blowing smoke, and it’s hard to align smoke with anything else.
Regards,
Ric
Ric Locke, I prefer being stupid and uninformed, as this helps me determine my voting preferences. Please stop posting immediately.
Ric,
That was awesome, but i’d like to point out, that we still have some pretty old networks out there still in service where your scenerio isn’t always the case. Depending on where in the world the calls are originated, determines the technology in which it is carried. There are still area’s in Indiana which operate cross-bar equipment switches (at least in 1999, the last time I was there). So you accurately describe modern high speed VOIP and Sonet equipment, but there are still area’s even within the US which operates at a lower rate.
Once again, great job.
jacitelli,
Heh. Until 2000, Southwestern Bell (whatever it’s called nowadays) maintained a facility in east Texas that repaired & refurbished Strowger step-by-step equipment for installation in small-town exchanges. That was also the year the town I live in got a second-hand Ericsson CO… replacing the Strowger; we never had a crossbar at all!
None of which is at issue in this exchange. The “issue” is the switches carrying international traffic, all of which are Sonet at the oldest.
Regards,
Ric
Jacitelli, while you are right about some of the more rural areas of the country’s phone system possibly still using Strowger switches (although I’d wager they are getting harder and harder to find these days; as the RBOCs initiated a major switch upgrade back in the mid-1990s; there are likely still a few “mom and pop” telcos located out in the back of beyond still using the old iron, but not many), you certainly would not see anything like that used in international calling.
As an old data network engineer, I can say that Ric did an excellent job in describing how the system works (and brother, was he ever right about those fucking PTTs). It would be fun to watch Hiney Boy Greenwald’s brain explode, let alone Mona’s, if Ric’s synopsis was posted on their blogs. I’d pay good money to see that…
Ric, Southwestern Bell is now called AT&T. They took that name after SBC (Southwestern Bell’s “intermediate” name) bought what was left of AT&T a couple of years ago. Name recognition and all that.
jacitelli – Don’t go making fun of us that live in Hoosierland. How can we be expected to operate in the 21st Century when many people here stil think that Moses was just clearing the way for Robert Montgomery Knight?
…one of the worst offenders in that respect is the Bundespost of Germany.
I don’t know squat about most of what is being discussed here, but I will testify that if you have ever tried to use a payphone to call home from Germany, it quickly became apparent why they have coins in such high denominations.
Cave Bear, I wonder if you, too, might be old enough to remember what SPRINT is an acronym for…
B Moe, the Bundespost is a rock in lots of roads. Remember Iridium? The original concept was that it was primarily an Iridium-Iridium system; $1 a minute to call any Iridium phone from any other. They only needed gateways to the switched system when the call was to/from another phone. That was intolerable to the PTTs, who demanded that when a call was made from an Iridium phone they get their pound of flesh — at standard long-distance rates! The Bundespost backed them up all the way. That wasn’t all the reason for the failure of Iridium, but it was a large factor.
Regards,
Ric
Well, I remember when Sprint was United Telephone. My mom’s husband was a lineman in those days.
Glenda Campbell
Wichita Linebacker
Gentle On My Datamining.
Ric. Jeff and Dan beat me to it, but anything you can add to what you’ve already outlined would be great. This is fascinating stuff. Thanks.
Fifty microseconds is not a long time for a judge to make that decision.
This bears repeating… as long as necessary for the blockheads in Gleensland to understand.
but, the judge has three days from those fifty microseconds to issue a warrant.
I thought that the real issue wasn’t the 48 microseconds, as warrants can be retroactive, but that in order to spy on one conversation, you had to open up all the packets that went through a given switch, over the entire time the warrant was in effect, and that required warrants for every single other conversation.
Which, needless to say, would be a bit of a workload for the FISA court. My understanding is that the perceived argument is that the court would be too busy, and the pre-counterargument to that is that they aren’t, now, all that busy. But wouldn’t the real argument be that they would be busier than they, and any other of other FISA courts, keep up with? Not to mention that you’d have to show probable cause, or the wiretapping equivalent, for every single other conversation.
Or have I misperceived?
I think that’s right, Slarti. wasn’t that similar to Carnivore as well? it had to sift through everything to catch anything.
[…] and resources” defending them from these attacks. Perhaps Ellensberg is alluding to the fundraising he did related to the issue without telling his readers. Or perhaps he is thinking about the time […]
The telephone system we are using today still uses the legacy Tip and Ring -48 Volts line which is susceptible to noise.`”-
digital telephone systems today presents a great improvement overt the analog phone systems we used severa decades ago-:*
modern day telephone systems are quite reliable and offers more services.’*
our telephone system these days are so great that they are packed with so many features;;;