RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/03/whistlebl…

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier’s systems, exposing customers’ voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

“What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment,” Babak Pasdar, CTO of New Jersey-based IGXglobal told Threat Level. “I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that.”

Pasdar won’t name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/qwest-ceo…

Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchios defense documents alleging the National Security Agency began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11 arent the only accusations that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

According to court documents unveiled this week, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio clearly wanted to argue in court that the NSA retaliated against his company after he turned down a NSA request on February 27, 2001 that he thought was illegal. Nacchios attorney issued a carefully worded statement in 2006, saying that Nacchio had turned down the NSAs repeated requests for customer call records. The statement says that Nacchio was asked for the records in the fall of 2001, but doesnt say he was “first asked” then.