Perfect Citizen would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would flag "unusual activity" signaling an impending cyberattack, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Defense contractor Raytheon recently was awarded with a classified contract for the first stage of the surveillance program valued up to $100 million.

Some industry and government officials with knowledge of the program view Perfect Citizen as overreaching by the NSA into domestic affairs, while other view it as a critical program to fight emerging security threats that only the NSA can manage.

"The overall purpose of the [program] is our Government…feel[s] that they need to insure the Public Sector is doing all they can to secure Infrastructure critical to our National Security," said one internal Raytheon email, the text of which was seen by The Wall Street Journal. "Perfect Citizen is Big Brother."

A U.S. military official said the program was long overdue and would not be a violation of privacy.

U.S. intelligence officials have grown increasingly concerned about possible Chinese and Russian surveillance of computer systems that control the electric grid and other U.S. infrastructure.

"Because the program is still in the early stages, much remains to be worked out, such as which computer control systems will be monitored and how the data will be collected. NSA would likely start with the systems that have the most important security implications if attacked, such as electric, nuclear, and air-traffic-control systems," according to the Journal.

NSA chief General Keith Alexander head of the recently created US Cyber Command said in a speech that the role of the agency is to ""deter, detect and defend against emerging threats against our nation in cyberspace."

"All of us in government recognize that we cannot do this without the help of industry, academia and our allies," he said. "Securing cyberspace is a team sport."
 

The suit also names the National Security Agency (NSA), Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington, and former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.

The lawsuit, Jewel v. NSA, is aimed at ending what the EFF says is "the NSA’s dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it."

Evidence in the case includes undisputed documents provided by former AT&T employee Mark Klein showing AT&T has routed copies of Internet traffic to a secret room in San Francisco controlled by the NSA.

EFF attorneys filed a suit against AT&T in 2006 alleging that US telecoms giants had opened its network to the NSA without warrants. This year Congress passed legislation giving telecommunications firms immunity from spying lawsuits. The case is now stalled in federal court.

"In addition to suing AT&T, we’ve now opened a second front in the battle to stop the NSA’s illegal surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and hold personally responsible those who authorized or participated in the spying program," said Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

"For years, the NSA has been engaged in a massive and massively illegal fishing expedition through AT&T’s domestic networks and databases of customer records. Our goal in this new case against the government, as in our case against AT&T, is to dismantle this dragnet surveillance program as soon as possible."
 

The National Security Agency has purchased servers on which Google provides search technology used to process information compiled by networks of intelligent agents around the globe.

Google is also offering search features for a site similar to Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, were agents can share and post information on a secure online forum. Intellipedia is accessible only to the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and a number of other intelligence agencies.

"Each analyst, for lack of a better term, has a shoe box with their knowledge,"  Sean Dennehy, chief of Intellipedia development for the CIA, told the San Francisco Chronicle  "They maintained it in a shared drive or a Word document, but we’re encouraging them to move those platforms so that everyone can benefit."

Depending on their level of clearance agents can log on to Intellipedia and access three levels of information, top secret, secret, and sensitive but unclassified. Currently the site has 37,000 accounts with 35,000 articles making up 200,000 pages, according to Dennehy.

Google’s other government customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington, D.C.

Mike Bradshaw, who heads Google’s federal government sales team, says the company sells nearly identical products to corporate clients as it does to government agencies.
"There were some wild accusations," Bradshaw said. "But everything we do with the government is the same as what we do with our corporate customers."

If AT&T and other big telcos fed the National Security Agency a stream of data pilfered from switching rooms, it may come out in court. However, President Bush has promised to veto any bill that lacks immunity for the telcos.

For now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is happy the House of Representatives passed a “compromise surveillance bill” minus the immunity craved by the White House and the telecoms accused of engaging in wiretapping.

The issue of illegal wiretapping arose with the Hepting v AT&T class action lawsuit that started in January 2006. Public awareness of the spying increased when a whistleblower named Mark Klein provided testimony and evidence a switching room in San Francisco captured all Internet traffic passing through the AT&T facility.

Though the lawsuit seemed destined for dismissal under an appeal made to apply states’ secrets privileges, Hepting continued to move through the judicial process. With the Bush Administration winding down to a close, we have to wonder if a pardon from the White House might undo all of the casework done to date on Hepting.

Nancy Pelosi talked tough during election season, but it appears that’s all it was – just talk.

Not only is the EFF trying to remind the government, citizens, and AT&T that the Constitution forbids such practices, they’re also throwing the fact that AT&T, eighty years ago, actually took the side of the citizens.

In 1928, when the telephone was proliferating throughout the US, AT&T likened government surveillance of phone lines to the writs of assistance issued by King George II and III authorizing searches of anyone, anywhere, whether or not they were suspected of a crime.

If you remember your American history, this was one of the "abuses and usurpations" that made it necessary for the British colonies in America "to dissolve the political which" had connected them. In short, it was a cause for revolution.

So when the question of wiretapping came to the Supreme Court’s attention in 1928, AT&T filed an amicus brief against the United States.

Excerpted from that, as the EFF’s Derek Slater shows, is the following:

"The telephone companies deplore the use of their facilities in furtherance of any criminal or wrongful enterprise. But it was not solicitude for law breakers that caused the people of the United States to ordain the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as part of the Constitution…. [I]t is better that a few criminals escape than that the privacies of life of all the people be exposed to the agents of the government, who will act at their own discretion, the honest and the dishonest, unauthorized and unrestrained by courts.

"The telephone has become part and parcel of the social and business intercourse of the people of the United States, and this telephone system offers a means of espionage to which general warrants and writs of assistance were the puniest instruments of tyranny and oppression."

It begs the question: What has happened to Ma Bell over the last century that it would repeatedly take sides against the wishes and rights of the American public? And what happened to the ideals of government we set up so long ago?

My guess: Money happened. Lots of it.

Slater concludes:

AT&T isn’t the only one in need of a history lesson; Congress is, too, and it’s up to each and every one of us to set our representatives straight. By passing horrible legislation last week permitting the warrantless surveillance of Americans’ international communications, Congress failed to do its job and check the Executive’s abuse of power. Now we must do our democratic duty and help restore our Constitutional rights.

And I conclude with a quote from the man that wrote the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson:

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?"

Looks like we’ve waited far too long.

A BBC report said the popular Blackberry devices, used by millions of people to keep up with their email, have been declared out of bounds for use by French government officials. The edict has met with less enthusiasm than pairing red wine with seafood at dinner:

But some officials are flouting the ban and using them in secret, it adds.

“They tried to offer us something else to replace our Blackberries but it doesn’t work,” one unnamed official told (Le Monde).

RIM has defended its solution by citing its encryption and its approval by NATO and several national governments on security grounds. They also told the BBC that the NSA, America’s agency responsible for breaking encrypted communications, can’t view Blackberry messages.

One has to wonder if allegations that AT&T provided the NSA with unfettered access to Internet traffic has influenced the French paranoia. It is likely encrypted traffic heading out of the US to foreign destinations would pique the interest of the codebreakers working at Fort Meade.

The timing of the French complaint, well over a year after the Electronic Frontier Foundation dropped AT&T documents onto the judge’s bench in their class-action spying case, should also be cause for wonder. Did some piece of private information somehow become public after having been sent to or from a Blackberry? The report does not say.

Now, according to Newscientist.com, it looks like the agency has plans to expand the program to include the monitoring of social network sites such as MySpace.

Individuals often give out all sorts of personal information on social networking sites, from pets’ names to sexual and political preferences.

“I am continually shocked and appalled at the details people voluntarily post online about themselves,” said Jon Callas, chief security officer at PGP, an encryption software maker.

New Scientist suggests that the NSA could combine tidbits gathered from social networking sites with data culled from online purchases, cell phone transmissions, or any number of other sources.

One issue that prevents this from happening frequently right now is the multitude of incompatible formats in which that information is stored. But as a new structure known as RDF comes into use, this difficulty will pass. “RDF turns the web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people,” says David de Roure of the University of Southampton.

Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland has explored the technology as it might be used by the NSA. “It certainly made relationship finding between people much easier,” he said. “It picked up softer [non-obvious] conflicts we would not have seen before.”

This might help the NSA sniff out groups of terrorists, money launderers or blacklisted groups, according Amit Sheth, a co-researcher.

The information that the NSA could access through social networking sites wouldn’t be anything that wasn’t already viewable to any other members who came along.

Still, there’s something a tad creepy about the idea of the men in black looking at your pictures of Fluffy.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.

The suit was filed Friday, just a day after USA Today broke the news of Verizon, AT&T and Bell South’s (paid) compliance with the government agency to collect information when a call is made from the companies’ phone lines. Reportedly, Qwest Communications refused access to its phone records without the proper warrants.

Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer, two New Jersey attorneys on behalf of Verizon’s 50 million customers, are seeking $1,000 per violation as outlined in the Telecommunications Act of 1934.

“The Telecommunications Act of 1934 is as clear as clear can be,” said Mayer. “You can’t turn over the records of your customers and if you do so it’s $1,000 per violation. The Constitution is very clear. The Supreme Court has consistently held that the Fourth Amendment prevents unlawful searches and seizures which we believe this to be.”

Following the principles of the Fifth Amendment, if not the Fourth, Verizon would not confirm or deny that phone records were supplied to the NSA, but in a statement the company did say, “Verizon does not, and will not, provide any government agency unfettered access to our customer records or provide information to the government under circumstances that would allow a fishing expedition.”

It doesn’t say “did not,” but again, they’re not confirming or denying because they can’t comment on an NSA program “directed against al-Qaeda.” But that wasn’t really the question.

The controversy comes at a time when the telecommunications industry is wrapped up in another heated debate over Network Neutrality, a principle that, if legislated, would bar telcos and cable companies from establishing tiered broadband access. Verizon, among others, have made public verbal commitments to what critics call “the Internet’s First Amendment,” but have lobbied heavily against legislation guarding it.

News of (paid) government spying cooperation will likely dampen the trust Verizon has asked for in dealing with Net Neutrality, especially when added to reported tax break scandals, and “recent rhetorical excesses.”

Civil rights activists are hoping the Department of Justice will not intervene as it appears to be doing in a similar lawsuit against AT&T, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, for allegedly allowing government agencies to tap phone conversations. The DoJ may block the suit from going forward, saying that state secrets may be divulged in the course of the trial.

News of the lawsuit dropped Verizon shares nearer to its 52-week low, plummeting by 1.26% as of 1:31 PM Monday.

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Qwest Communications has not enjoyed the best publicity, with numerous websites hosting complaints, many at length, about the company’s shortcomings. Bad feelings and bad words have been the norm.

Yet today, news of a website called Thank You Qwest began making the rounds. And blogs have been displaying a badge praising Qwest for being NSA-free.

It started when the National Security Agency began making the rounds of telecoms, USA Today reported. While AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth readily capitulated to requests for millions of phone records, Qwest had problems with the request.

Nacchio saw the request as being potentially illegal. Also, should Qwest have been found in violation of the law, immense financial penalties could have been assessed to it. Qwest wanted to see legal backing for the NSA request, which was not accompanied by a court order.

NSA’s response to that, according to the article, proves very interesting:

Nacchio left Qwest in 2002. His successor, Richard Noteabart, reportedly ended talks with the NSA in 2004. However, a spokesperson for Qwest said in the report, “We can’t talk about this. It’s a classified situation.”

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And that is nothing to compared to some folks. But what in the world am I going to do with 403 links? How can I reasonably use or manage this information?

Interestingly enough, I care little about the “social” part of social bookmarking. I am compelled to use BlinkList because: 1) It is easier to manage a larger number of links with it. 2) I can access my bookmarks from anywhere.

BlinkList is most useful to me as a means to track my comments. It is a part of the puzzle to excerpting my comments in the sidebar of my blog. It also powers the business links section on the home page of my site.

My thought on social bookmarking, like the use of categories on my blog, was to keep the number of tags I use to a bare minimum. That was done by using more high-level approach with tags like “web 2.0″ and “podcast”.

I’m not sure that works though. What I find more useful are very specific tags for very specific information. For example, during the research I did for my post on NSA wiretaps and MySpace, I bookmarked all links under nsaandmyspace. Now, I know exactly what sorts of links I can expect to find there. Same thing goes for my networkneutrality links.

Then there is this problem – article not found. That’s probably a pretty common problem for news type links. How many of my 403 links no longer work? There is really no way to tell.

Marshall Kirkpatrick brings up a whole other issue – the pain of having multiple social bookmarking accounts. He wants to be able to separate work from personal links rather easily. I sort of do that via private links in BlinkList but it is annoying to have to always check that box. And my personal tags still show up in my account (even though I’ve told them they shouldn’t), although viewers can’t actually access them.

The reality is that I don’t need 403 links. There are probably hundreds of links in BlinkList that I really am never going to use again. I’m going to rethink my whole approach to social bookmarking. And it may be as drastic as exporting my links, cleaning them up, and starting all over again.

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Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.