At one time, circa 2013, spying on everybody was considered outrageous. Now it’s “necessary.”
I’m
reprinting my article from 2013 below. But first, a quick bit of
history concerning two little known Israeli companies, Narus and
Verint. They have helped the NSA spy on the planet.
Narus,
in 2010, was folded into Boeing, one of the largest defense contractors
in the world. Then, in 2014, Boeing sold Narus to Symantec. In 2016,
Symantec sold half of itself to the notorious Carlyle Group. So Narus, a
little engine that could, has been keeping very high-priced company.
Verint
has managed to retain its independence, after buying out the majority
stake of Comverse Technology, its former owner, in 2013.
Okay, here we go---from this point on, everything was written in 2013:
2013. Boom. Explosive revelations. The NSA is using telecom giants to spy on anybody and everybody, in a program called PRISM.
But the information is not new.
Three books have been written about the super-secret NSA, and James Bamford has written them all.
In 2008, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Bamford as his latest book, The Shadow Factory, was being released.
Bamford
explained that, in the 1990s, everything changed for NSA. Previously,
they'd been able to intercept electronic communications by using big
dishes to capture what was coming down to Earth from telecom satellites.
But with the shift to fiber-optic cables, NSA was shut out. So they devised new methods.
For
example, they set up a secret spy room at an AT&T office in San
Francisco. NSA installed new equipment that enabled them to tap into the
fiber-optic cables and suck up all traffic.
How Bamford describes this, in 2008, tells you exactly where the PRISM program came from:
“NSA
began making these agreements with AT&T and other companies, and
that in order to get access to the actual cables, they had to build
these secret rooms in these buildings.
“So
what would happen would be the communications on the cables would come
into the building, and then the cable would go to this thing called a
splitter box, which was a box that had something that was similar to a
prism, a glass prism.
“And
the prism was shaped like a prism, and the light signals would come in,
and they’d be split by the prism. And one copy of the light signal
would go off to where it was supposed to be going in the telecom system,
and the other half, this new cloned copy of the cables, would actually
go one floor below to NSA’s secret room.
“...
And in the secret room was equipment by a private company called Narus,
the very small company hardly anybody has ever heard of that created
the hardware and the software to analyze these cables and then pick out
the targets NSA is looking for and then forward the targeted
communications onto NSA headquarters.”
In
James Bamford's 2008 interview, he mentions two Israeli companies,
Narus and Verint, that almost nobody knew about. They played a key
role in developing and selling the technology that allowed NSA to deploy
its PRISM spying program:
Bamford:
“Yeah. There’s two major — or not major, they’re small companies, but
they service the two major telecom companies. This company, Narus, which
was founded in Israel and has large Israel connections, does the —
basically the tapping of the communications on AT&T. And Verizon
chose another company, ironically also founded in Israel and largely
controlled by and developed by people in Israel called Verint.
“So
these two companies specialize in what’s known as mass surveillance.
Their literature — I read this literature from Verint, for example — is
supposed to only go to intelligence agencies and so forth, and it says,
'We specialize in mass surveillance,' and that’s what they do.
“They
put [this] mass surveillance equipment in these facilities. So you have
AT&T, for example, that, you know, considers it’s their job to get
messages from one person to another, not tapping into messages, and you
get the NSA that says, we want, you know, copies of all this. So that’s
where these [two Israeli] companies come in. These companies act as the
intermediary basically between the telecom companies and the NSA.”
AMY
GOODMAN: “Now, Jim Bamford, take this a step further, because you say
the founder and former CEO of one of these companies [Verint] is now a
fugitive from the United States somewhere in Africa?”
JAMES
BAMFORD: “...the company that Verizon uses, Verint, the founder of the
company, the former head of the company, is now a fugitive in — hiding
out in Africa in the country of Namibia, because he’s wanted on a number
of felony warrants for fraud and other charges. And then, two other top
executives of the company, the general counsel and another top official
of the parent company, have also pled guilty to these charges.
“So,
you know, you’ve got companies — these [two] companies have foreign
connections with potential ties to foreign intelligence agencies, and
you have problems of credibility, problems of honesty and all that. And
these companies — through these two companies pass probably 80 percent
or more of all US communications at one point or another.
“And
it’s even — gets even worse in the fact that these companies also
supply their equipment all around the world to other countries, to
countries that don’t have a lot of respect for individual rights —-
Vietnam, China, Libya, other countries like that. And so, these
countries use this equipment to filter out dissident communications and
people trying to protest the government. It gives them the ability to
eavesdrop on communications and monitor dissident email communications.
And as a result of that, people are put in jail, and so forth...”
AMY
GOODMAN: “And despite all of this...these telecom companies still have
access to the most private communications of people all over America and
actually, it ends up, around the world. And at the beginning of the
summer [2008], the Democrats and Republicans joined together in granting
retroactive immunity to these companies for spying on American
citizens.”
The
fugitive CEO of Verint, whom Bamford mentions, is Jacob “Kobi”
Alexander. In 2006, the US Dept. of Justice charged him with conspiring
to commit securities and wire and mail fraud. The SEC weighed in and
filed similar civil charges.
Alexander
fled to Namibia, where he finally settled with the SEC for $46
million. In 2017, he returned to the US, where he was sentenced to the
30 months in prison.
He is no longer the CEO of Verint.
It's
obvious that these two Israeli companies, Narus and Verint, working for
NSA, have been able to divert mega-tons of data to Israeli
intelligence.
The
recent media stories on this NSA PRISM spying system indicate that NSA
is tapping into the servers of huge tech companies; Google, AOL,
Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Yahoo. The methods of data theft may have
expanded, but the result and intent remain the same.
The
government-corporate juggernaut moves ahead. Their rationale---catching
terrorists---is, in great part, a cover story to obscure the fact that
the State wants control over the lives of all citizens, as it ratchets
up the very conditions that provoke rebellion.
It's a classic pincer movement.
As
far as the current NSA PRISM spying is concerned, look for limited
hangouts. These are partial admissions and excuses, offered to conceal
greater crimes and stop investigations.
The
giant tech companies already have their limited hangout in place: “We
didn't know it was happening, we would never have allowed it to happen,
and we'll be much more careful in the future.”
Obama
is saying: Yes, let's have dialogue on this matter...there's a fine
line between national security needs and overweening intrusion into
citizens' privacy.
The NSA is saying: We do spy, but we don't read content of emails and phone calls. We just keep 'records' of the communications.
The lies lying liars tell.
~~~
(Episode 13 of Rappoport Podcasts -- "The Real President" -- is now posted on my substack. It's a blockbuster. To listen, click here. To learn more about This Episode of Rappoport Podcasts, click here.)
~~~
(The link to this article posted on my blog is here.)
(Follow me on Substack, Twitter, and Gab at @jonrappoport)
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