April 2007
We've all heard the recent revelations about the Bush administration's unauthorized wiretaps. We've struggled to understand what "data-mining" means, and wondered what data our government is applying this technique to. Calm down! These are all US government programs, for our "protection." But, sadly, it doesn't end with the FBI or NSA. Most of us are familiar with term "spyware", something our computer anti-virus vendors regard as a threat on a par with Trojans and malware; but aside from those vendors, no one else seem to care about this sort of unauthorized data-mining, probably because it's "harmless." Google, and other big "home-page" sites are also recording our movements on the net, the better to feed us ads that that cater to (prey upon) our demonstrated areas of interest. These big outfits say they're being strictly ethical with the data they mine, but all bets are off when what they're collecting gets subpoenaed!
Perhaps the most bizarre and frightening potentials come from a sort of data-mining that represents a mongrelization of the two categories described above. This is the totally out of control surveillance that combines the Brave New World potential of government data mining with the unauthorized and secretive data snatching proclivities of private entities. How does this occur? It happens when a government "outsources." When we know about this sort of outsourcing, it's OK, like the data that Aetna collects on Medicare clients. It's when we don't know, but have reason to suspect, that the prospect gets frightening.
An edifying example of this sort of mongrelized "outsourcing" takes us back to September 2001, when reports surfaced that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, tried to tip off the FBI and the CIA that they believed Al Qaeda was about to attack some prominent targets in the US. The FBI knew Mossad had recently sent a lot of agents to US, and had been keeping tabs on several dozen of them, and so was suspicious of the tip, thinking Mossad had some devious agenda. So they basically ignored the warning. The attacks occurred, and our government thrashed around, alternately admitting, spinning, and then denying reports about Mossad tracking the terrorists. A number of stories about it were published in leading newspapers, and Fox News ran a series of four TV reports publicizing some of the evidence, but ultimately all reputable news media bowed to pressure, pressed no doubt in the name of "national security", and pulled back from the story.
Most intriguing, our government's relationship with Israel entered a new phase: in some respects the foreign policies of the two nations merged to become a single strategy. We attacked the country Israel feared most, the one which had bombarded them with Scud missiles a decade earlier, without ever offering a credible reason for doing so and then stood back and held off their critics while they savaged southern Lebanon. Without getting into conspiracy theories (and of course such theories abound), the real question is, how was Mossad able to track the terrorists here in the US, and how did they know the 9/11 team's exact timetable? There really is only one reasonable answer and that is: via telephone network data-mining, used in concert with more traditional surveillance methods such as wiretapping. Incredible as it may seem, there is solid evidence to support this conjecture.
When Ma Bell was broken up, the RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) that inherited the local call business were cut off from Bell Labs, the technical development center. Instead of trying to develop their own new systems in-house, the RBOCs generally have taken the route of contracting out their technical requirements. One of the more nightmarish jobs has been keeping the billing software up to date, especially considering the absolutely free-form chaos of wireless. One contractor has come up on top in this business: Amdocs; and, remarkably, it is a Israeli-run company. Here are some tidbits from a 2003 article about the company: "SBC Communications was Amdocs' first (US) customer (back in the '80s). From there, Amdocs expanded into helping RBOCs process records, and eventually the company moved into the billing arena. 'Then wireless started taking off; that's when we really moved into billing,' says Couture. The company went public in 1998 and 'has had really rapid growth.' Today Amdocs has approximately $1.5 billion in revenues (2002) and close to 10,000 employees," says Couture..." (http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/431supsys1.html )
Here is a (partial) customer list from the company's 2002 annual report: "Bell Canada, BellSouth, BT, Cable & Wireless, Cingular, Deutsche Telekom, Japan Telecom, KT Freetel, Nextel, Orange, Qwest, SBC, Sprint, Sprint PCS, TDC, VoiceStream and Western Wireless." In that annual report, the only clue that it is an Israeli company is in Note 16 on employee benefits, where the bulk of the discussion concerns policies that relate to Israeli employees specifically. No corporate headquarters is specified; instead, principal offices around the world are listed. However, Amdocs' main development center is in Israel and those working there would have routine access to analyze any customer's call billing data base. This access would allow them to determine who is calling who, and when they do it. Done systematically, on a regular basis, this amounts to data-mining, and allows you to track any person who uses a telephone, and follow him on a day by day basis throughout the areas that Amdocs serves (which includes 90% of the USA and much of Europe).
Now consider the possibility that Amdocs may have been infiltrated by the Mossad, whether with the knowledge of Amdocs' management, or without it. As an Israeli-run company, such infiltration would have been easy to do. Could this very logical possibility have escaped the FBI and the CIA? Of course not. In fact, immediately after 9/11 scores of Israeli agents in the US were arrested. But all these Mossad people were quietly released within a few months. We have to assume that an accommodation was reached. It is logical to assume that the telephone data- mining capabilities that served the Israelis before 9/11 began serving the US intelligence agencies not long after 9/11. We don't fully trust Mossad, of course, so it seems certain we have some of our own technical specialists involved.
Our involvement is strongly suggested by the Bush administration's admission, in 2005, that it had been doing wiretaps without obtaining secret court orders as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In traditional surveillance, investigations move at human speed and the number of wiretaps requested is in some reasonable relationship to the number of agents working on the ground, making requests for them. But when you are doing telephone data- mining, the situation is entirely different because the number of suspect phone numbers can mushroom at electronic speed. Whenever a suspect number calls a number it hasn't called before, or vice-versa, you need to identify the party at the new number. If this turns out to be an unknown person, the speedy way to check-out the unknown person is to tap the new number. And we know the Bush administration told Congress it gave the go-ahead to the speedy approach, virtually admitting it was employing telephone data-mining.
Getting back to Mossad; like any other investigative agency, once they have identified a suspect phone number, they too will want to move to the logical next step, which is to tap. But how can they do it, especially in the US? We have to assume they foresaw this necessity long ago because it turns out there is another Israeli originated company capable of covering this requirement. Here is a company description from a corporate website: "Verint Systems Inc., formerly Comverse Infosys, based in Woodbury, New York (a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc., a US company, traded OTC) is a leading provider of analytic software solutions for digital video security and surveillance, communications interception, and enterprise business intelligence. Verint software generates actionable intelligence through the collection, retention and analysis of voice, fax, video, email, Internet and data transmissions from multiple types of communications. Verint products are installed in government facilities, airports and transportation systems, customer contact and service centers, corporations, financial institutions, and other organizations. Verint has a global presence with sales and support services across the U.S. and in 50 countries worldwide." ( http://www.cmvt.com/aboutCTI.asp?top=1&id=2)
Comverse had sales of $1,270,000,000 for the fiscal year ending in 2002, making it, like Amdocs, the world leader in its field. And like Amdocs, it's annual report makes no effort to publicize its link to Israel. However, once a company goes public, some things can not be entirely concealed. Here are excerpts from the section of the 2003 annual report that deals with research and development: "A portion of the Company's research and development operations benefit from financial incentives provided by government agencies...in Israel. ...During the past fiscal year, the Company's research and development activities included projects submitted for partial funding under a program administered by the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the State of Israel... Permission from the government of Israel is required for the Company to manufacture outside of Israel products resulting from research and development activities funded under such programs, or to transfer outside of Israel related technology rights, and in order to obtain such permission the Company may be required to increase the royalties to the applicable funding agencies and/or repay certain amounts received as reimbursement of research and development costs."
To understand Comverse's role, it helps to understand that wiretapping no longer requires anyone to go and physically tap a wire. It's all software-driven now, just like telephone call connection, or routing over the internet. As the leading contractor for surveillance technology, the company's employees have routine access to such installations for maintenance and upgrading, and probably have work-arounds that can penetrate any kind of electronic security because that is their business, and they are the best at it.
If we assume that both Comverse and Amdocs have cadres of Mossad employees in their ranks, it is clear enough that Israeli intelligence would have the capability to telephonically track and listen to just about anyone they wanted to, in Europe or America. This seems to explain how they knew the World Trade Center would be attacked, and how they were able to warn the FBI and the CIA it was going to happen, and how it happened that Israeli employees of Odigo, a company headquartered in the Trade Center area, were warned two hours before the attacks (reported by the Washington Post 9/27/01, and other media), and how Mossad had a van full of their agents watching the planes hit the Trade Center from a prominent vantage point in Liberty State park, directly across the Hudson in New Jersey (all occupants of the van were arrested and later questioned by the FBI - this is in the Fox News report that can be viewed [if you have media player capability] at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm and also was reported by many newspapers just after 9/11. )
Israel clearly grasped the potential of outsourcing electronic surveillance long before our government did. Of necessity, it needed to track enemies outside of the jurisdiction it controls, and evidently made the decision to fund an outsourcing program (as suggested in the R&D note of the Comverse report, quoted above) at least 25 years ago. Now that our government has climbed on board Israel's coat-tails, we may feel a little safer from 9/11 style terrorists here in the US. But our concern is about the global prospect, and regrettably as we benefit from outsourced surveillance "protecting" us, we also understand it is a two edged sword that sooner or later will "seriously infringe on individual privacy and freedom".
Foreshadowing what is to come, there have already been complaints by law enforcement that "war-on-drugs" operations were compromised by what had to be sophisticated telephonic data-mining and surveillance, with suspicion aimed at Comverse. After all, if the Regan administration could raise money for the contras in central America, under the table, why shouldn't Mossad, or some free-lancer within its ranks raise needed funds in a similar way? The reality is, power corrupts, and unregulated, outsourced power corrupts even faster.
No publicly transparent national government is capable of regulating the spying by intelligence services that occurs on public networks. For one thing, the world of electronic communications has no meaningful border, as we have seen with the activities of Mossad. Secondly, all the dirty work can be performed by private contractors, or agents working in secret under the cover of private enterprise whose owners are either ignorant or willing to lie in the service of what they perceive as a higher cause. In addition to this, there also is the growing problem of irresponsible private use, particularly of the internet: viruses, spam, hacking, internet data-mining, spyware... etc. Again, no national government can do much about it beyond cracking down at home and closing its electronic borders, tantamount to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
It looks like another case where a global authority is needed. Ideally, such an authority would regulate and license electronic communications networks with cross-border linkages, impose standards on data collection by the companies providing such networks, audit compliance, maintain a court where police departments could request surveillance permits for specific investigations on licensed networks, and where individuals or governments could file suits against perceived abusers. Ideally this proposed court would allow individuals to file against their own national governments, a feature that would tend to reinforce the kind of audit or inspection procedures which inevitably meet with resistance, evasion and outright deception. If we're lucky, and move fast enough, there is still hope that we can derail this "Brave New World" of deniable global surveillance and undeniable electronic intrusion that has invented itself within the last twenty years.
We've all heard the recent revelations about the Bush administration's unauthorized wiretaps. We've struggled to understand what "data-mining" means, and wondered what data our government is applying this technique to. Calm down! These are all US government programs, for our "protection." But, sadly, it doesn't end with the FBI or NSA. Most of us are familiar with term "spyware", something our computer anti-virus vendors regard as a threat on a par with Trojans and malware; but aside from those vendors, no one else seem to care about this sort of unauthorized data-mining, probably because it's "harmless." Google, and other big "home-page" sites are also recording our movements on the net, the better to feed us ads that that cater to (prey upon) our demonstrated areas of interest. These big outfits say they're being strictly ethical with the data they mine, but all bets are off when what they're collecting gets subpoenaed!
Perhaps the most bizarre and frightening potentials come from a sort of data-mining that represents a mongrelization of the two categories described above. This is the totally out of control surveillance that combines the Brave New World potential of government data mining with the unauthorized and secretive data snatching proclivities of private entities. How does this occur? It happens when a government "outsources." When we know about this sort of outsourcing, it's OK, like the data that Aetna collects on Medicare clients. It's when we don't know, but have reason to suspect, that the prospect gets frightening.
An edifying example of this sort of mongrelized "outsourcing" takes us back to September 2001, when reports surfaced that the Israeli secret service, Mossad, tried to tip off the FBI and the CIA that they believed Al Qaeda was about to attack some prominent targets in the US. The FBI knew Mossad had recently sent a lot of agents to US, and had been keeping tabs on several dozen of them, and so was suspicious of the tip, thinking Mossad had some devious agenda. So they basically ignored the warning. The attacks occurred, and our government thrashed around, alternately admitting, spinning, and then denying reports about Mossad tracking the terrorists. A number of stories about it were published in leading newspapers, and Fox News ran a series of four TV reports publicizing some of the evidence, but ultimately all reputable news media bowed to pressure, pressed no doubt in the name of "national security", and pulled back from the story.
Most intriguing, our government's relationship with Israel entered a new phase: in some respects the foreign policies of the two nations merged to become a single strategy. We attacked the country Israel feared most, the one which had bombarded them with Scud missiles a decade earlier, without ever offering a credible reason for doing so and then stood back and held off their critics while they savaged southern Lebanon. Without getting into conspiracy theories (and of course such theories abound), the real question is, how was Mossad able to track the terrorists here in the US, and how did they know the 9/11 team's exact timetable? There really is only one reasonable answer and that is: via telephone network data-mining, used in concert with more traditional surveillance methods such as wiretapping. Incredible as it may seem, there is solid evidence to support this conjecture.
When Ma Bell was broken up, the RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) that inherited the local call business were cut off from Bell Labs, the technical development center. Instead of trying to develop their own new systems in-house, the RBOCs generally have taken the route of contracting out their technical requirements. One of the more nightmarish jobs has been keeping the billing software up to date, especially considering the absolutely free-form chaos of wireless. One contractor has come up on top in this business: Amdocs; and, remarkably, it is a Israeli-run company. Here are some tidbits from a 2003 article about the company: "SBC Communications was Amdocs' first (US) customer (back in the '80s). From there, Amdocs expanded into helping RBOCs process records, and eventually the company moved into the billing arena. 'Then wireless started taking off; that's when we really moved into billing,' says Couture. The company went public in 1998 and 'has had really rapid growth.' Today Amdocs has approximately $1.5 billion in revenues (2002) and close to 10,000 employees," says Couture..." (http://www.xchangemag.com/articles/431supsys1.html )
Here is a (partial) customer list from the company's 2002 annual report: "Bell Canada, BellSouth, BT, Cable & Wireless, Cingular, Deutsche Telekom, Japan Telecom, KT Freetel, Nextel, Orange, Qwest, SBC, Sprint, Sprint PCS, TDC, VoiceStream and Western Wireless." In that annual report, the only clue that it is an Israeli company is in Note 16 on employee benefits, where the bulk of the discussion concerns policies that relate to Israeli employees specifically. No corporate headquarters is specified; instead, principal offices around the world are listed. However, Amdocs' main development center is in Israel and those working there would have routine access to analyze any customer's call billing data base. This access would allow them to determine who is calling who, and when they do it. Done systematically, on a regular basis, this amounts to data-mining, and allows you to track any person who uses a telephone, and follow him on a day by day basis throughout the areas that Amdocs serves (which includes 90% of the USA and much of Europe).
Now consider the possibility that Amdocs may have been infiltrated by the Mossad, whether with the knowledge of Amdocs' management, or without it. As an Israeli-run company, such infiltration would have been easy to do. Could this very logical possibility have escaped the FBI and the CIA? Of course not. In fact, immediately after 9/11 scores of Israeli agents in the US were arrested. But all these Mossad people were quietly released within a few months. We have to assume that an accommodation was reached. It is logical to assume that the telephone data- mining capabilities that served the Israelis before 9/11 began serving the US intelligence agencies not long after 9/11. We don't fully trust Mossad, of course, so it seems certain we have some of our own technical specialists involved.
Our involvement is strongly suggested by the Bush administration's admission, in 2005, that it had been doing wiretaps without obtaining secret court orders as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In traditional surveillance, investigations move at human speed and the number of wiretaps requested is in some reasonable relationship to the number of agents working on the ground, making requests for them. But when you are doing telephone data- mining, the situation is entirely different because the number of suspect phone numbers can mushroom at electronic speed. Whenever a suspect number calls a number it hasn't called before, or vice-versa, you need to identify the party at the new number. If this turns out to be an unknown person, the speedy way to check-out the unknown person is to tap the new number. And we know the Bush administration told Congress it gave the go-ahead to the speedy approach, virtually admitting it was employing telephone data-mining.
Getting back to Mossad; like any other investigative agency, once they have identified a suspect phone number, they too will want to move to the logical next step, which is to tap. But how can they do it, especially in the US? We have to assume they foresaw this necessity long ago because it turns out there is another Israeli originated company capable of covering this requirement. Here is a company description from a corporate website: "Verint Systems Inc., formerly Comverse Infosys, based in Woodbury, New York (a subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc., a US company, traded OTC) is a leading provider of analytic software solutions for digital video security and surveillance, communications interception, and enterprise business intelligence. Verint software generates actionable intelligence through the collection, retention and analysis of voice, fax, video, email, Internet and data transmissions from multiple types of communications. Verint products are installed in government facilities, airports and transportation systems, customer contact and service centers, corporations, financial institutions, and other organizations. Verint has a global presence with sales and support services across the U.S. and in 50 countries worldwide." ( http://www.cmvt.com/aboutCTI.asp?top=1&id=2)
Comverse had sales of $1,270,000,000 for the fiscal year ending in 2002, making it, like Amdocs, the world leader in its field. And like Amdocs, it's annual report makes no effort to publicize its link to Israel. However, once a company goes public, some things can not be entirely concealed. Here are excerpts from the section of the 2003 annual report that deals with research and development: "A portion of the Company's research and development operations benefit from financial incentives provided by government agencies...in Israel. ...During the past fiscal year, the Company's research and development activities included projects submitted for partial funding under a program administered by the Office of the Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the State of Israel... Permission from the government of Israel is required for the Company to manufacture outside of Israel products resulting from research and development activities funded under such programs, or to transfer outside of Israel related technology rights, and in order to obtain such permission the Company may be required to increase the royalties to the applicable funding agencies and/or repay certain amounts received as reimbursement of research and development costs."
To understand Comverse's role, it helps to understand that wiretapping no longer requires anyone to go and physically tap a wire. It's all software-driven now, just like telephone call connection, or routing over the internet. As the leading contractor for surveillance technology, the company's employees have routine access to such installations for maintenance and upgrading, and probably have work-arounds that can penetrate any kind of electronic security because that is their business, and they are the best at it.
If we assume that both Comverse and Amdocs have cadres of Mossad employees in their ranks, it is clear enough that Israeli intelligence would have the capability to telephonically track and listen to just about anyone they wanted to, in Europe or America. This seems to explain how they knew the World Trade Center would be attacked, and how they were able to warn the FBI and the CIA it was going to happen, and how it happened that Israeli employees of Odigo, a company headquartered in the Trade Center area, were warned two hours before the attacks (reported by the Washington Post 9/27/01, and other media), and how Mossad had a van full of their agents watching the planes hit the Trade Center from a prominent vantage point in Liberty State park, directly across the Hudson in New Jersey (all occupants of the van were arrested and later questioned by the FBI - this is in the Fox News report that can be viewed [if you have media player capability] at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7545.htm and also was reported by many newspapers just after 9/11. )
Israel clearly grasped the potential of outsourcing electronic surveillance long before our government did. Of necessity, it needed to track enemies outside of the jurisdiction it controls, and evidently made the decision to fund an outsourcing program (as suggested in the R&D note of the Comverse report, quoted above) at least 25 years ago. Now that our government has climbed on board Israel's coat-tails, we may feel a little safer from 9/11 style terrorists here in the US. But our concern is about the global prospect, and regrettably as we benefit from outsourced surveillance "protecting" us, we also understand it is a two edged sword that sooner or later will "seriously infringe on individual privacy and freedom".
Foreshadowing what is to come, there have already been complaints by law enforcement that "war-on-drugs" operations were compromised by what had to be sophisticated telephonic data-mining and surveillance, with suspicion aimed at Comverse. After all, if the Regan administration could raise money for the contras in central America, under the table, why shouldn't Mossad, or some free-lancer within its ranks raise needed funds in a similar way? The reality is, power corrupts, and unregulated, outsourced power corrupts even faster.
No publicly transparent national government is capable of regulating the spying by intelligence services that occurs on public networks. For one thing, the world of electronic communications has no meaningful border, as we have seen with the activities of Mossad. Secondly, all the dirty work can be performed by private contractors, or agents working in secret under the cover of private enterprise whose owners are either ignorant or willing to lie in the service of what they perceive as a higher cause. In addition to this, there also is the growing problem of irresponsible private use, particularly of the internet: viruses, spam, hacking, internet data-mining, spyware... etc. Again, no national government can do much about it beyond cracking down at home and closing its electronic borders, tantamount to cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.
It looks like another case where a global authority is needed. Ideally, such an authority would regulate and license electronic communications networks with cross-border linkages, impose standards on data collection by the companies providing such networks, audit compliance, maintain a court where police departments could request surveillance permits for specific investigations on licensed networks, and where individuals or governments could file suits against perceived abusers. Ideally this proposed court would allow individuals to file against their own national governments, a feature that would tend to reinforce the kind of audit or inspection procedures which inevitably meet with resistance, evasion and outright deception. If we're lucky, and move fast enough, there is still hope that we can derail this "Brave New World" of deniable global surveillance and undeniable electronic intrusion that has invented itself within the last twenty years.
The Odigo story doesn't pan out, see http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Odigo It is interesting, however, that Odigo was acquired by Comverse/Verint the very next year!
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