NSA and FBI Ask Tech Brokers for Access to ISP Data on Customers

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Exterminator

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Oct 23, 2012
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When the US government agencies want access to user data from small Internet providers, they sometimes turn to a class of companies that is also known as “trusted third parties” and who make a lot of money from this activity.


- Several companies handle all data requests sent to smaller ISPs


The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act enables phone companies and Internet providers to charge the government whenever they ask them to respond to warrants. For instance, AT&T charges the CIA around $10 million per year for access to the phone call metadata pile, ZDNet reports.

Smaller ISPs aren’t forgotten when such data requests are issued, but they don’t personally handle the demands in most cases. That’s because they don’t always have the needed infrastructure of manpower to respond to requests, or perhaps they don’t have a lawyer with security clearance to actually see the secretive data demands.

Either way, they end up signing up with these companies, the trusted third parties, who are cleared to handle documents from even the FISA court who regularly gives the NSA the green light to collect data on Americans and foreign citizens.

While companies such as Neustar, Yaana Technologies and Subsentio aren’t exactly hiding what they’re doing, they’re not advertising it either. In fact, a good portion of their revenues come from charging the federal and intelligence agencies of the United States for the troves of data they hand over for their clients.

Neustar and Yaana act as private intelligence companies and provide large-scale data capture and analytics, even though Neustar is mostly known for its phone number portability business and owns several top level domains approved by ICANN.

It handles the data requests sent to some 400 of the thousands of US phone companies, both big and small, which means that it facilitates access to data from millions of American users. The company came under fire back in 2012 when it was accused of withholding from the public any details on wiretap or data requests it receives on behalf of its clients.

The company started issuing transparency reports, but things are yet unclear. This year, however, until August 15, Neustar processed 1,414 legal intercepts.

Back in 2012, out of the 2,278 data requests the company went through, about 77 percent came from an unnamed customer that can only be assumed to be the US governmental agencies.

On some occasions, Neustar is the first company to set eyes on the requests, although other times it will contact the ISPs to ask for permission to handle it. ISP Cbeyond, however, points out the most important issue – what’s it worth the company’s permission, when they don’t even know what content they’re being asked to give access to?
 
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