From: Brad Huntting <huntting@glarp.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 93 14:14:32 PST
To: (L. Detweiler) <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Subject: Re: Is this true???
In-Reply-To: <9301291840.AA29938@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Message-ID: <199301292212.AA02949@misc.glarp.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> First of all, the simple feasibility of such an operation must be
> called into question.  There is a tremendous amount of data going
> over modems on public telephone lines.  What is the chance that
> even a small fraction could be monitored? (And an even more
> infinitesmal fraction archived.)

The intelgence community get's what it want's.  If congress wont
allocate the funds, they'll import drugs to pay for it.  I dought
they can keep everything on file, but they certainly filter for
interesting data.

> The claim has appeared here before that it is "trivial" for a
> government agency to scan for interesting keywords and sort the data
> based on that.  But I think that even that would lead to loads of
> irrelevant crap and require an army of intelligence agents to sort. 
> Where is this army?

Fort Mead, MD.

> Also, the claims in the letter are referring to public telephone
> networks.  Would this include all the networks comprising the Internet?
> If so, this multiplies the data volume immensely.  How could anyone
> find anything useful in these massive streams?  Granted, *very*
> sensitive information is probably contained within it, but how the heck
> could it be found efficiently?

A recent issue of Communications of the ACM is dedicated to the
issue of data filtering.  People have been working on this technology
for along time.  It's very importaint in the information age to
have all relivant information.

> Regarding the claim that one major monitoring hub is code named
> "elizabeth" in Boulder Colorado.  There is a government standards
> agency there, if I am not mistaken, I forget if it is NIST (?).  Also,
> the National Center for Oceanic Research, which has very tremendous
> computing power (e.g. Cray YMP) is there also.  In their tours they
> show massive archival storage areas, which they say record major
> amounts of global atmospheric data (e.g. temperatures, wind currents
> > etc.) collected from satellites.  These could conceivably be in part
> "covers" but the idea is also rather unimaginable.  Can anybody report
> on agencies in the areas cited?  There is the very specific claim of a
> carrier in Columbus Ohio.

That's National Center for _Atmosphearic_ research (the nearest
ocean is 1300mi away), and it's so public there's probably no way
it could be used for such a purpose.  NIST and NOAA are also very
open.  However, we do have an FBI office here (I only know because
a friend of mine works for a criminal defence lawyer located in
the same building... briliant planing, no?).  There are numerous
warehouses in the east quarter any number of which could house a
database like this.



brad