[LINK] Most comms are an open-book

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/12/next-step-identifying-customers-
surveillance-technology-companies-and-turning-heat>

"In the past month, thanks to reporting from the Wall Street Journal
<http://projects.wsj.com/surveillance-catalog/#/> and Bloomberg, as well 
as WikiLeaks and its media partners, a little sunlight has finally 
exposed a large but shadowy industry: Western technology companies 
selling mass spying software to governments. 

The amazing and dangerous capabilities of these tools are described in 
hundreds of marketing documents that were recently leaked to the media 
organizations. The Wall Street Journal laid out many of the tools in 
detail, explaining how they can be used to spy on millions of citizens" 
</quote)

According to <http://wikileaks.org/The-Spyfiles-The-Map.html> these
two companies are active in this region: Security Software International,
and Endace Accelerated .. here's what they are doing .. 

http://www.ssipacific.com/?page_id=160

"Lawful Interception Management System is a certified and industry proven 
solution for telecommunications service providers to assist law 
enforcement agencies in executing electronic surveillance court orders. 

The system is based on a central management platform for monitoring all 
kinds of telecommunication services. It integrates seamlessly with more 
than 200 different network nodes (switches, routers, gateways, 
application servers) by all leading infrastructure vendors. 

LIMS enables realtime monitoring of telephony, fax, SMS, MMS, e-mail, 
VoIP, Push-to-Talk and other IP-based communication services. 

The modular architecture of LIMS facilitates cost-efficient LI solutions 
for small operators and is scalable for surveillance networks with 
several thousand concurrent intercepts."

And: <http://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/files/0/10_200702-ISS-DXB-ENDACE3.pdf>

How do you collect the data?

* Endace network monitoring probes are connected to the network by
passive taps. They are invisible to the network, and have no MAC or IP 
address.

* Lossless high-precision recording to disk is guaranteed by Endace's
DAG technology. All packet time-stamps are accurate to <100 nanoseconds.

* Deployed at the "edge" between the core network and access networks,
individual lines can be targeted, and all traffic in/out is silently 
mirrored and recorded to disk. This includes all network signalling 
information, all "session" setups/teardowns and the full content of all 
communications.

* Supported network types: Ethernet, ATM, PoS, PDH/TDM. The monitoring 
infrastructure can tap at any point in the carrier network.

* All communications are completely captured and accurately recorded,
so there can be no doubt of the activities/communications of the
target.

* We have the data stored in a reusable format, so it can be analysed
and reassembled using many different tools.

* It is now only a question of the legal environment in which we operate.

--

Cheers
Stephen