regarding the latest discussion of full take voice and cache for weeks[0]: updated image of the landing station now at: https://peertech.org/files/wci.jpg
the lower left images are the landing station, the upper remainder the cable operator facilities. these landing station infrastructure upgrades were performed as part of "some intelligence programs". voice compresses exceptionally well, particularly some non-free codecs or tightly tuned opus :) [ see also: the Google Voice Search hack against Android devices performed by DITU at DEF CON 19 with DRT boxes amped to max - this also made great use of highly compressed Speex aspect; so many phones in "Open MIC Night" without undue congestion or noticeable impact on data channel even if in use. ] last but not least, regarding cover stories for such infrastructure: at Sprint in the late 90's there was a pioneering effort at full-take DPI on backbone OC-12 and OC-48 links. the cover story was "collecting only header information, and only to optimize internet routing across the internet." the reality was: a slight adjustment, heavily compartmentalized, to full take and DPI for intelligence work. (see also the origins of the DPI vendors :) in all likelihood, many technicians have seen something funny, but the plausible story was plausible, and so... [ note however that this system could not store full take for any period, like the pioneering GCHQ efforts for full spectrum capture and cache across data in addition to voice. thus the focus was on custom ASIC and hardware chasis mounted to storage where matching "streams" could be "selected" and then processed UPSTREAM. ] perhaps more later! --- link salad: long phat cables: http://cryptome.org/eyeball/cablew/cablew-eyeball.htm http://cryptome.org/eyeball/cable/cable-eyeball.htm http://cryptome.org/nsa-seatap.htm and telegeography's submarine cable map: http://www.submarinecablemap.com/ also relevant: http://cryptome.org/telecomm-weak.htm http://cryptome.org/nsa-fibertap.htm http://cryptome.org/nsa-lynn.htm 0. "NSA surveillance program reaches 'into the past' to retrieve, replay phone calls" http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-surveillance-program-reaches-into-the-past-to-retrieve-replay-phone-calls/2014/03/18/226d2646-ade9-11e3-a49e-76adc9210f19_story.html "The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for "retrospective retrieval," and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011." --- end top post of great negligence --- On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 10:09 AM, coderman <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 6:26 AM, Eugen Leitl <[email protected]> wrote: >> ... >> Very few ISP's ever go to the landing stations, typically the cable >> operators provide cross connects to a small number of backhaul providers. >> That makes a much smaller number of people who might ever notice the >> splitters and taps, and makes it totally transparent to the ISP. But the >> big question is, does this happen? I'm sure some people on this list have >> been to cable landing stations and looked around. I'm not sure if any of >> them will comment. > > yes it happens. c.f.: > http://207.198.103.187:8081/wci.jpg > > the lower images are the facilities at the landing site, the upper > images the termination / peering point a few score miles down fiber. > pre-911 the landing site was more shack and less fortress (i may have > a before picture somewhere.) > > cryptome has some great info on cable routes and facilities: > http://cryptome.org/eyeball/cable/cable-eyeball.htm > http://cryptome.org/nsa-seatap.htm > http://cryptome.org/telecomm-weak.htm > http://cryptome.org/nsa-fibertap.htm > http://cryptome.org/nsa-lynn.htm > > note that this line of inquiry is frowned upon. after Sean Gorman's > dissertation on critical infrastructure vulnerabilities the prevailing > approach has been security through obscurity. we all know how well > that works... ;) -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected].
