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

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

________________________________________
From: Louis Mamakos [louie@transsys.com]
Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2008 6:44 PM
To: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier

For IP.  Please excise my personal information if you choose to publish.

What about CALEA?

Let's just consider that you've got some state or federal law
enforcement
agency with the ability to obtain lawful orders for communication
intercepts.  Imagine that you're at a communications network operator
with a lot of customers; you're likely to get some number of these
lawful orders over time.  Probably more than one at a time if you
have a large enough customer based.  Especially if you're a mobile
operator with a prepaid offering that can be anonymous and disposable.

Now, how would you think the results of these intercepts would be
delivered
to the law enforcement agency?  Would it be surprising to have a
dedicated
circuit in place to serve as the transport of the intercepted content?

And if you've ever seen a lawful order, you'll recall that there's text
in there about not disclosing the details of the intercept so as to not
compromise an investigation in progress.  It might not seem so out of
the ordinary that there's a lack of monitoring on a communications
facility
who's purpose is to deliver the content of one or more lawful intercept
orders.

Who's to say what the circuit referenced in that affidavit is used for,
but there are certainly explanations that are not so sinister as is
implied.

And frankly, if you consider the volume of mobile data traffic carried
by some random cell phone operator, a DS3 seems inadequate to send
complete copies of the sum total of it all.

On Mar 7, 2008, at 9:17 AM, David Farber wrote:

>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
> Date: March 6, 2008 7:47:48 PM EST
> To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
> Subject: Re: [IP] : Feds Have a High-Speed Backdoor Into Wireless
> Carrier
>
>
> The Wired story is good.  What's excellent is the affidavit
> from the whistleblower, mentioned (and linked) in that story:
>
>       http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/files/Affidavit-BP-Final.pdf
>
>
> ---Rsk
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
>


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