|
Post by jeffolie on Sept 26, 2013 12:20:05 GMT -6
ATT, Verizon, Sprint Are Paid Cash By NSA For Your Private Communications The National Security Agency pays AT&T T +0.47%, Verizon and Sprint several hundred million dollars a year for access to 81% of all international phone calls into the US, according to a leaked inspector general’s report, which has been reported by the Washington Post, AP, and the New York Review of Books. In fact., this secret report says that “NSA maintains relationships with over 100 U.S. companies, underscoring that the U/S. has the “home-field advantage as the primary hub for worldwide communications,” the New York Review of Books reported in its August 15 issue. These secret cooperative agreements reveal that NSA pays surveillance fees to telcos and phone companies were first made public by Edward Snowden, the former NSA administrator, now resident in Russia. AT&T charges $325 for each activation fee and $10 a day to monitor the account, according to the AP. Verizon charges $775 per tapping for the first month and then $500 a month thereafter, according to the Associated Press today. The article reported that Microsoft MSFT +1.15%, Yahoo YHOO +4.05% and Google refused to say how much they charged to allow the government to tap into emails and other non-telephonic communications. In a separate report the Washington Post reported that NSA pays the telcos roughly $300 million annually for access to information on their communications; where and when they occurred, the identity of the person called and how long the conversation lasted. This surveillance is accomplished by tapping into “high volume circuits and packet-switched networks.” The ability to obtain this information was authorized by the US Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, passed in 1994 by the Clinton administration. While $300 million for giant telephone companies is only a slight fraction of their overall revenues, it is quite a shocking revelation to think that the telcos consumers pay every month to hook them up with the world are also being paid by the U.S. government to maintain watch over our daily communication whether over wired instruments or unwired communications equipment like I pads and cell phones. Snowden recently released information by means of a slide which revealed that the government ” was able to access real-time-data on the live voice, text, e-mail, or internet chat services, in addition to analyzing stored data.” (like your Facebook account) www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/09/23/attverizonsprint-are-paid-cash-by-nsa-for-your-private-communications/?partner=yahootix
|
|
|
Post by unlawflcombatnt on Oct 5, 2013 23:39:49 GMT -6
Excellent article and very telling.
The lying Telecoms have been claiming that they were "forced" to allow access to the NSA (and every other spy agency).
The truth is that Telecoms voluntarily gave this information out for a price, and made no real attempt to protect Americans' privacy.
Again, we should thank Edward Snowden for exposing this information, and forcing the NSA to come clean on this & so many other un-Constitutional acts were previously denied by the Government.
|
|
|
Post by jeffolie on Oct 9, 2013 0:01:17 GMT -6
Excellent article and very telling. The lying Telecoms have been claiming that they were "forced" to allow access to the NSA (and every other spy agency). The truth is that Telecoms voluntarily gave this information out for a price, and made no real attempt to protect Americans' privacy. Again, we should thank Edward Snowden for exposing this information, and forcing the NSA to come clean on this & so many other un-Constitutional acts were previously denied by the Government. bad telecoms ... no good SOBs ... looking to govt or business for ethics will not result in the GOOD GOOD, " ... in the name of "good" ... " I told my sweet wife Olie just yesterday morning, " You are a lucky woman, you lead a GOOD life ". Sweet Olie is happy ... a Chinese proverb: a happy wife is a happy life. The values we hold as GOOD feature the 10 Commandments. The results are that we are blessed with a happy, thriving family. We are lucky to live here, now. My oldest daughter and her finance selected a Rabbi to perform their early Nov ceremony ... an act of faith and not an act of govt nor business Most common Americans ignore the govt and business as much as they can my jeffolie view: looking to govt or business for ethics will not result in a GOOD life, attempting to live an ethical life will at times result in govt and business punishing you. I do what I can and take joy is small victories...that is enough for me...each year I atone to attempt to do just a little better next year I found comfort long ago acknowledging the many who are far more intelligent, rich, socially admired and powerful in my youth by Einstein's view of the bigger picture and my finitely small part “God does not play dice with the universe” . When I look for GOOD, the high ground in ethics, I admire the Ten Commandments. Einstein’s great contributions to physics started in his Annus Mirabilis, the year 1905 whose centenary was recently celebrated as the World Year of Physics. In that year, Einstein published six seminal papers that revolutionized our understanding of the physical universe in three different directions, and he was all of 26 years old! The papers dealt with (i) the ‘light-quantum’ or the photon concept and an explanation of the photoelectric effect, (ii) the theory and explanation of Brownian motion, and (iii) the Special Theory of Relativity, a radically new view of space and time. Einstein himself regarded only the first paper as truly revolutionary since it was the second major step (after Max Planck’s work) in the development of quantum theory, whereas the Special Theory of Relativity belonged to the older classical theory. In addition, in the same year Einstein discovered the equivalence of mass and energy, encapsulated in perhaps the most famous equation of all: E = mc2.
|
|