N.S.A. May Have Penetrated Internet Cable Links - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/technology/a-peephole-for-the-nsa.html?ref=technology
Although the Internet is designed to be a highly decentralized system, in practice a small group of backbone providers carry almost all of the network’s data.
Security experts say that regardless of whether Level 3’s participation is voluntary or not, recent N.S.A. disclosures make clear that even when Internet giants like Google and Yahoo do not hand over data, the N.S.A. and its intelligence partners can simply gather their data downstream.
That much was true last summer when United States authorities first began tracking Mr. Snowden’s movements after he left Hawaii for Hong Kong with thousands of classified documents. In May, authorities contacted Ladar Levison, who ran Lavabit, Mr. Snowden’s email provider, to install a tap on Mr. Snowden’s email account. When Mr. Levison did not move quickly enough to facilitate the tap on Lavabit’s network, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did so without him.
Mr. Levison said it was unclear how that tap was installed, whether through Level 3, which sold bandwidth to Lavabit, or at the Dallas facility where his servers and networking equipment are stored. When Mr. Levison asked the facility’s manager about the tap, he was told the manager could not speak with him. A spokesman for TierPoint, which owns the Dallas facility, did not return a call seeking a comment.
Verizon has said that it and other carriers are forced to comply with government requests in every country in which they operate, and are limited in what they can say about their arrangements.
“At the end of the day, if the Justice Department shows up at your door, you have to comply,” Lowell C. McAdam, Verizon’s chief executive, said in an interview in September. “We have gag orders on what we can say and can’t defend ourselves, but we were told they do this with every carrier.”
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