[IP] : Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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From: EEkid@aol.com [EEkid@aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 6:53 PM
To: David Farber; dfarber@cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/whistleblower-f.html



"A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

"What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told Threat Level. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that."

Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit. "


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