
Room 641A - llambda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
======
austenallred
> [The class action lawsuit against AT&T] was dismissed on December 29, 2011
> based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications
> companies that cooperated with the government.

What an overreach of power on the part of Congress. Something goes to court to
discuss its legality, and then Congress retroactively declares it to be legal?
Yikes.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well no: Congress is well capable of granting retroactive immunity. The
constitution restrains it from retroactively criminalizing things, so that you
can be prosecuted for something that wasn't illegal when you did it; but
retroactive decriminalization happens fairly frequently and is an essentially
liberal action. Why should a private actor be burdened for the perceived
misdoings of government? It's not up to corporations or individuals to
regulate the government, from a legal standpoint.

~~~
weland
> Why should a private actor be burdened for the perceived misdoings of
> government?

But why does this have to be ensured through the action of the Congress? If
the misdoing was the Government's, it is up to the courts of law to absolve
the private actor of guilt.

Granting immunity of private actors for government illegalities is a very
dangerous precedent. Imagine if the same was to be done if a private security
company fires on civilians on behalf of state orders, and is then absolved of
responsibility through an act like this one.

When a private authority does something on behalf of state authority, the
state effectively gives away some of its responsibility; when it
decriminalizes it later, the part of responsibility that it has given away is
now vanished. In some cases, of course, the state can still be sued over the
initiative, but such a measure ensures that companies are sheltered in case
the whole thing goes awry, so there's little incentive in not collaborating.

What does suck about this in terms of ethics is that it's hard to draw a line
between when retroactive decriminalization is beneficial and when it isn't.
After abolishing slavery, it obviously makes sense to decriminalize slaves'
attempted escapes. But does it also make sense to decriminalize racist
behaviour?

Edit: just to be sure, I'm arguing over principles here, and all I have to
bring is historical arguments, not judiciary ones, since I neither am a
lawyer, nor do I reside in the US. If I missed something due to unfamiliarity
with the US law, I apologize in advance :-).

~~~
DigitalJack
"But why does this have to be ensured through the action of the Congress? If
the misdoing was the Government's, it is up to the courts of law to absolve
the private actor of guilt."

Courts don't absolve anyone of guilt. They merely determine if a law has been
broken. It is congress that makes law, so it is up to congress to construe the
law such that the private actor has not broken anything.

~~~
weland
But does this not open the way for arbitrariness? At this rate, given enough
support in the congress, the executive power can pretty much do anything --
the congress will just decriminalize it afterwards.

Edit: What I meant in previous post was that a court of law has the
possibility of absolving private actors or responsibility, the same way they
do with someone who has committed an illegal action under blackmail: they are
still guilty of having broken a law, but there are obvious reasons why they
should not suffer the full penalty of it (or any penalty at all), and legal
action moves against the blackmailer.

------
ancarda
I've been saying this for years. Pretty much all I've said over the last few
days is "I told you so".

My biggest concern is come a week everyone will go back to not caring and I'll
go back to pestering people to give a shit.

~~~
abrichr
What do you propose people do?

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jblock
I had never been to SF before last summer. This building was right across from
the bus I took home every day. And every day I wondered: what was in that
windowless building? Never was it not an imposing sight.

Even after I found out about this, it freaked me out; especially that it's
right in the heart of downtown.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Is this the building?

[http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds-8/611-folsom-street-
nsa.jpg](http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds-8/611-folsom-street-nsa.jpg)

Is that just very horrid architecture, or some kind of shielding? Perhaps
both?

~~~
icegreentea
It's a bit a lot of things. I can't find when the building was built, but I'm
guessing the 60s/70s, so pretty much the height of brutalist architecture.
Basically, very hard geometric forms, heavy on repetition, lots of concrete.
There's a lot of that type of stuff sitting around, especially on university
campuses.

It appears to be have been actually designed for use as a telephone switching
center, for which windows actually are mostly useless. Should take a look at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street),
another telephone exchange in NYC. It is literally a window-less skyscraper.

~~~
nostromo
Most big cities have a communications building like this.

My favorite one is in NYC: 33 Thomas Street. It looks like it was designed to
be the capitol of a dystopian megalopolis.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/33_Thoma...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/33_Thomas_Sidewalk_View.JPG)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/33_Thoma...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/33_Thomas_Street_December_1991.jpg)

Speaking of dystopia... I bet it houses a spy room just like the one in SF!

~~~
cavemanklaus
Reminds me of the film Equilibrium
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_(film)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_\(film\))
very imposing building!

------
ihsw
The talk page for the PRISM article[1] is also very interesting.

> Why is it all caps? Some other reason? It should be noted in the article
> somewhere...

And:

> Everyone is losing their minds over this thing, but as far as I can tell,
> data is only provided with a "legally binding order or subpoena". This isn't
> the NSA reading through every inbox in the world. Or am I wrong?

Once more:

> The denials by the participating companies are not surprising and may, in
> fact, be a requirement under the National Security Letters, which the NSA
> and FBI use to give quasi-legal cover to their signals collection.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:PRISM_(surveillance_progra...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:PRISM_\(surveillance_program\))

~~~
skore
The page itself notes, curiously:

> A related program, a big data or data mining system _based on cloud
> computing and Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)_ technology known as
> "Boundless Informant", was disclosed in top secret documents leaked to the
> Guardian and reported on June 8, 2013.

(my emphasis)

So, after we've had licenses claim (in one way or another) "do not use this
software to wage war", will we see a rise in "do not use this software for
secret intelligence gathering or processing" licenses?

Still, both are rather pointless when the entity you're trying to subject to
the terms of your license has a standing army and heaps of nukes. Seriously.
This is why we can't have nice things.

------
detcader
From Matt Bors:

"There’s a line I’ve seen trotted a few times now that goes, “Ah, we knew all
this was happening, you idiots!” We didn’t know. If you knew about PRISM you
should have scooped The Guardian and made a name for yourself. The fact is,
this story is mammoth and is bringing an incredible amount of attention to a
program that’s been operating in total secrecy for a decade. But, yes, you’re
smart and get a pat on the head for not being a “sheeple.” "

[http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2013/06/07/prism-
thoughts/](http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2013/06/07/prism-thoughts/)

~~~
AlexeiSadeski
PRISM is dramatically less interesting than this.

~~~
detcader
Care to enlighten us as to how? And by "us" I mean President Obama (who was
pretty much forced to comment on it and certainly didn't say anything like you
did), those in the administration going after the leaker(s) (for if this is
uninteresting, the leakers aren't in the wrong at all), and those people who
marked the slides as TOP SECRET. Oh and the German data protection and freedom
of information commissioner [1]

What of the others programs in the slides? Two even had to be redacted out
because of the potential of the fallout against NY-based Guardian US

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-
surveillanc...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/07/europe-surveillance-
prism-idUSL5N0EJ31S20130607)

~~~
AlexeiSadeski
This thread concerns unlimited access to the entire internet.

PRISM concerns limited access to a few massive internet companies.

------
ChrisAntaki
The discovery of Room 641A is more profound than PRISM. Every web request,
text message, phone call... it goes through these hubs where the data is
copied and saved. PRISM is just about getting access to data sent over secured
HTTPS connections, from what I can tell. It's not (currently) economical for
them to use computing power to break (all of) those codes, and it's easier to
apply pressure to tech companies to just hand them the keys.

~~~
mtgx
Yes, that must be exactly what they're doing. Siphon all the unencrypted data
at the ISP level, and gain access to the rest of the data that is encrypted
from the biggest companies - and then expand the "program" to more companies
in the future.

And to think that they rejected the idea of UN doing the same thing (the ITU
debacle last year). It was only so _they_ are the only ones doing it, all
along.

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e3pi
"...The room measures about 24 by 48 feet (7.3 by 15 m) and contains several
racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept
and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds.

Author James Bamford raises the suspicion question of an Israeli backdoor to
the Israeli Narus in The Shadow Factory 2008.

------
gggggggg
From that link, the guy who leaked it was a "computer technician" for twenty
years. Is that real, or was there a effort to discredit him or something.
Twenty years is a long time in the same role.

~~~
ktsmith
Yes it's real. It's amazing to me how quickly this room, ECHELON, Carnivore
and all the rest have been forgotten. There seemed to be a small but vocal
technical uproar over this rooms existence when it was discovered but the
public at large ignored it. Then Congress retroactively made it legal so there
was nothing we could even do about it at that point.

~~~
jlgreco
I think it is basically a form of semantic satiation. Mention something
controversial enough times and eventually the public stops understanding that
it was real. I wager that if you took a poll of Americans, most would believe
that ECHELON is a fictional plot device in spy movies that "conspiracy
theorists" think is real because they are dumb.

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fishcakes
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:SER_marcus_de...](http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:SER_marcus_decl.djvu&page=17)

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samstave
This suite was just below Twitters main HQ for years

~~~
johns
Different building. Twitter was at 795 Folsom (at 4th) which was also an AT&T
building. This building is at 2nd and has very few windows and does not appear
to be occupied by any office tenants (I walk by it every day).

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drivebyacct2
It's surreal to watch all of this old stuff get drudged up here and elsewhere.

I almost wish I watched mainstream news to see how much of this depth is
covered or if it's just PRISM and not anything about how bullshit FISA
warrants are or how crazy insane National Security Letters are (and how many
hundreds of thousands of them are issued)... OR that they regularly wiretap
the internet.

Between:

\- this (which we've known about)

\- the new leaked slide that indicates they do massively, widely wiretap fiber

\- PRISM (which I suspect were simply the dates that the companies brought up
infrastructure to be able to quickly and easily comply with FISA warrants.
Which means "direct access" is true, but it also means that "we were forced to
make it easy to give the government what they want as soon as they need it")

They basically have real time access to HTTP data (and HTTPS if a CA is
compromised or controlled by them [is it really even that crazy of a theory at
this stage]). They also can get organized, categorized access to my data with
a FISA warrant (please, read up, they are as rubber-stamp as they're
referenced in these articles).

Sigh.

~~~
drivebyacct2
[joke]Now the slide that needs to leak is the one that lists compromised root
CAs.[/joke,sorta]

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escaped_hn
The EFF is protecting us more than the NSF. Donation sent.

~~~
harryh
Strictly speaking it's not really the job of the National Science Foundation
to protect us.

