rapid dissent: Not just phone tag anymore

Capabilities of the equipment housed in the NSA's "secret room" in AT&T's San Francisco switching office have been the center of public debate since the disclosure last week of the existence of an NSA program capable of universal network surveillance.

Mainstream news coverage of this program has been concerned with the legality of monitoring phone statistics. However, the media has largely ignored the fact that in addition to phone calls, the NSA is also tracking the virtual movement of innocent Americans across the network.

Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, the company that provides the hardware for the NSA's San Francisco operation had this to say:

"Anything that comes through (an IP network), we can record...We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their VOIP calls."

This is going to get worse before it gets better.

Labels: fisa, Information Security, nsa, tia, warrantless wiretaps