The Quantico Circuit

The Quantico Circuit sounds like the title of a sloppy noir pulp novel. Perhaps the plot would be as follows: intrepid gumshoe smokes out nefarious crime syndicate's spy organization.

It's really the name of the project wherein a "major wireless carrier" allows an "unnamed source" to look at ALL the motherfucking info. In this case it's been suggested AT&T or Verizon as the "major wireless carrier" and the FBI as the "unnamed source." The government has been allowed freely to listen in on, record, track, and trace all calls, texts, emails and bills. This was why Bush wanted telco immunity. This is why I want to vomit.

In the fall of 2003, Pasdar was hired by a major telecommunications carrier to overhaul its security. He discovered a mysterious “Quantico Circuit” with access to the entire mobile network that didn’t have any security controls. Nor did it have any usage logs making a record of what information flowed through the system. The security breach was unheard of, abandoning basic industry norms.

Despite half-hearted protests by Congress, the FBI's budget for these operations have increased significantly.

And in the one story running from a national news outlet, the story that started it all, congratulations to the Washington Post.

"When you're building something like this deeply into the telecommunications infrastructure, when it becomes so technically easy to do, the only thing that stands between legitimate use and abuse is the complete honesty of the persons and agencies using it and the ability to have independent oversight over the system's use," said Lauren Weinstein, a communications systems engineer and co-founder of People for Internet Responsibility, a group that studies Web issues. "It's who watches the listeners."

I am a Verizon customer. I am a Verizon customer because from Ohio to Iowa to Minnesota, their coverage was best four years ago. I did re-up about 2 years ago because nothing was different. My agreement is up and I'm running month by month. What now? The articles and interviews created after the Wash Post story ran seem to agree that the culprit here is Verizon. I'm not yet convinced this is fact, but. This on top of the capitulation demanded and received post 9/11. The company is rotten. Am I wrong in remembering that there was one national carrier President who showed the fed the figs when they demanded access in the name of National Security? Was it Alltel? Concerned customers (without an early end of contract fee looming) want to know.

Not related: were books like The Maltese Falcon and The Big Chill actually any better than the similar stuff being spewed forth?