How to turn domestic calls into international calls.

You take a domestic call, and re-route it through Canada or Mexico or somewhere else, with neither the callers or recipients knowledge, and BINGO!!, an international call. You can monitor anyone you want to, without a warrant.

And this all came out a couple of years ago in the ATT-Worldcom lawsuit.

And lets not forget the relationship WorldCom execs have with this admin. and the feds...

Smoking gun alert:

There is an easy way to circumvent the strict "no eavesdropping on US-to-US calls" Bush referenced: secretly route any snooped calls through another country.

It is a method that has already been used and documented in court, by WorldCom, and brought up by AT&T in WorldCom's bankruptcy filing: Route the domestic calls through a second country.

AT&T brought the accusation in 2003 that WorldCom routed US-to-US calls through Canada.

Furthermore, in the AT&T suit against WorldCom, AT&T specifically cites the case of a Democratic Congressman's US-to-US calls being so routed through Canada.

I'm going to post this AT&T press release in it's entirety as press releases from corporations are issued expressly for release and reprint, unlike copyrighted news stories and other such written materials.

For Release Wednesday, August 6, 2003
AT&T Replies To WorldCom's Bankruptcy Court Response

NEW YORK -- In a filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, AT&T said MCI/WorldCom's court filing earlier this week admits to the deception and fraud that AT&T had alleged in its objections to MCI/WorldCom's Plan of Reorganization for emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

AT&T's filing argued that MCI/WorldCom's response of Monday, August 4, purposely avoided addressing the point of AT&T's fraud allegations that the intent of the rerouting of calls was to deceive and defraud AT&T into paying termination fees for the calls.

MCI/WorldCom sought to justify the fraud scheme as legitimate "least cost routing," but AT&T said: "'Least cost routing' involves availing oneself of the lowest access charge available from the terminating carrier, i.e., shopping for the lowest charges from the terminating carrier. That is different in kind from deceptively causing another carrier to pay that terminating access charge," AT&T said.

"We're talking about the difference between shopping for bargains and shopping with somebody else's credit card. The latter is clearly a crime that people can go to jail for," AT&T Chief Counsel James Cicconi said in commenting on AT&T's request for the Bankruptcy Court's permission to seek damages it has suffered as a result of the fraud.

AT&T's filing today also cited additional instances of domestic U.S. Government telephone calls that were routed through Canada for completion, including calls for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. On July 28, AT&T cited domestic calling traffic of several U.S. Government agencies, including the Department of State and the Postal Service, as part of the scheme to defraud AT&T and its shareowners.

Further, the AT&T filing included examples of in-state calls between the Wisconsin district offices of U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.). The offices are pre-subscribed to MCI/WorldCom for long-distance calling, but calls between the offices were routed over AT&T's network after being diverted through Canada.

AT&T's filing today said MCI/WorldCom achieved the deception by:
* Separating out only the calls to the most expensive independent telephone companies, thus reducing the likelihood that the scheme would be discovered;

* Routing the calls through three intermediaries, thus hiding the fact that the calls were MCI/WorldCom's customers;

* Routing the calls through a foreign country, thus further concealing the source and setting up the next step; and

* Taking advantage of the knowledge that upon delivery to AT&T's network, MCI/WorldCom's "customer traffic commingled with literally trillions of minutes of calls on the AT&T network each year."
"Debtors (MCI/WorldCom) were well aware that even if AT&T had known to look, AT&T could not have easily detected Debtors' high-cost calls. Indeed, even after law enforcement notified AT&T of Debtors' fraudulent diversion scheme, it took AT&T weeks to locate the diversions in the ocean of data that AT&T's network generates," AT&T said in its filing today.

Elsewhere in its filing, AT&T said that MCI/WorldCom's description of its actions in admitting diverting traffic through Canada misstate the nature of the scheme. Yet, AT&T said, the admissions MCI/WorldCom made in its filing fall under the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal's Pattern Jury Instruction for Mail and Wire Fraud, which state in part: "A scheme to defraud is a scheme that is intended to deceive or cheat another and to … cause the loss of money or property to another."

In seeking to justify its fraudulent actions by disclosing that detailed call-routing information traveled along with the voice telephone calls, MCI/WorldCom failed to show it wasn't violating the law, AT&T said.

" … The mere fact that there is disclosure during the course of the scam does not eradicate the swindle," AT&T said. "So too, the mere fact that a carrier discloses call detail as part of a scheme to deceive or an artful stratagem does not in itself eliminate the deception."

AT&T also denied MCI/WorldCom's assertions that it had participated in shifting its costs to another carrier, saying that the instances MCI/WorldCom cited in its filing were not fraudulent activities and that the facts underlying the assertions were either wholly distinguishable from the "Canadian Gateway" scheme or irrelevant to it. (--End AT&T Press Release--)


If the Bush administration wanted to play with semantics and say they haven't snooped on any US-to-US calls (although it's becoming apparent that they have done so in some cases) the simple way would be to bulk route US-to-US calls through a third country (in this case Canada) then call that an "international intercept."

No wonder * went with the "we don't intercept domestic-to-domestic calls." Routing such calls outside of the country between end-points would mean that a simple domestic-only call suddenly becomes an international call (and all this without any knowledge of the caller or callee.)

(Edited to add link to AT&T press release: http://www.att.com/news/2003/08/06-12038 )

interested in it.

Add to that the unbridled arrogance and raw chutzpah of Bernie Ebbers, the CEO of Worldcom.

Perhaps he thought that he was "under protection"?

Nicely done, Sir!

I wondered why all the hubbub... smokescreen, false sense of security, etc.

Bastids.

and most corporations are multi-national, this is important to get out there for people to notice. Corporations are calling the shots. The "enemy", that's be us regular people and those handful of brave souls who have not sold out to the corporations. There are no nations anymore. National laws mean squat. Check the chimp's comments and attitude in the past 6 days for the evidence.

He doesn't observe any laws because his corporate bosses have told him laws are irrelevant.

We all the enemy in the eyes of those bastards. We, who dare insist we are free are most dangerous to them. They will do what they want and we had best recognize they do not give a whit about any laws.

Election fraud
Intel manipulation and corruption
Invasions without cause
Profiteering on war
Willful neglect as US cities went underwater
Budgetary corruption on grand scale
Environmental destruction on grand scale
Destruction of health/safety regulations
Intimidation of whistle blowers
Crony appointments resulting in large scale failures in essential services

Hey, what's a little tweaking with communications so they can listen to anybody and everybody?

:sarcasm:

The best way to know Bush* is repeating legal trickery after his earpiece is when he tries to win using words that are subtly different.

As if anyone believes such stuff coming from fool me twice.
Can't get fooled again!

get it to John Conyers?

How often have you called a sales office or tech support desk using an American telephone number, only to have the call rerouted to a call center somewhere in India? International rerouting of calls has been common practice for many years.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2326724


Kudos for astounding research!

Most of the rebates from various stores are using foreign countries to process their rebates. When or if you check on them by phone you are making a call in the US and they transfer it into an international call via the 1-800 number that you were to call.

every way to steal our civil liberties. WHEN the HELL are people going to wake up!

...perhaps this should be sent to congress-critters...I was just throwing out a theory and developing it at first.

Thanks for reposting it, Dr.Phool...the original thread seems to have expired. And this angle still bugs the hell out of me as an information security consultant.

By the way, there are a lot of posts on the original thread that further investigate other technological angles of this issue, and are well worth a perusal...you can find them here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2326724&mesg_id=2326724

Thread from Wed Dec-21-05 10:08 AM by Dunvegan

Domestic Taps Smoking Gun? WorldCom Routed US-to-US Calls Through Canada!

Smoking gun alert:

There is an easy way to circumvent the strict "no eavesdropping on US-to-US calls" Bush referenced: secretly route any snooped calls through another country.

It is a method that has already been used and documented in court, by WorldCom, and brought up by AT&T in WorldCom's bankruptcy filing: Route the domestic calls through a second country.

AT&T brought the accusation in 2003 that WorldCom routed US-to-US calls through Canada.

Furthermore, in the AT&T suit against WorldCom, AT&T specifically cites the case of a Democratic Congressman's US-to-US calls being so routed through Canada.

I'm going to post this AT&T press release in it's entirety as press releases from corporations are issued expressly for release and reprint, unlike copyrighted news stories and other such written materials.

For Release Wednesday, August 6, 2003
AT&T Replies To WorldCom's Bankruptcy Court Response

NEW YORK -- In a filing today in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, AT&T said MCI/WorldCom's court filing earlier this week admits to the deception and fraud that AT&T had alleged in its objections to MCI/WorldCom's Plan of Reorganization for emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

AT&T's filing argued that MCI/WorldCom's response of Monday, August 4, purposely avoided addressing the point of AT&T's fraud allegations that the intent of the rerouting of calls was to deceive and defraud AT&T into paying termination fees for the calls.

MCI/WorldCom sought to justify the fraud scheme as legitimate "least cost routing," but AT&T said: "'Least cost routing' involves availing oneself of the lowest access charge available from the terminating carrier, i.e., shopping for the lowest charges from the terminating carrier. That is different in kind from deceptively causing another carrier to pay that terminating access charge," AT&T said.

"We're talking about the difference between shopping for bargains and shopping with somebody else's credit card. The latter is clearly a crime that people can go to jail for," AT&T Chief Counsel James Cicconi said in commenting on AT&T's request for the Bankruptcy Court's permission to seek damages it has suffered as a result of the fraud.

AT&T's filing today also cited additional instances of domestic U.S. Government telephone calls that were routed through Canada for completion, including calls for the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Navy. On July 28, AT&T cited domestic calling traffic of several U.S. Government agencies, including the Department of State and the Postal Service, as part of the scheme to defraud AT&T and its shareowners.

Further, the AT&T filing included examples of in-state calls between the Wisconsin district offices of U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.). The offices are pre-subscribed to MCI/WorldCom for long-distance calling, but calls between the offices were routed over AT&T's network after being diverted through Canada.

AT&T's filing today said MCI/WorldCom achieved the deception by:
* Separating out only the calls to the most expensive independent telephone companies, thus reducing the likelihood that the scheme would be discovered;

* Routing the calls through three intermediaries, thus hiding the fact that the calls were MCI/WorldCom's customers;

* Routing the calls through a foreign country, thus further concealing the source and setting up the next step; and

* Taking advantage of the knowledge that upon delivery to AT&T's network, MCI/WorldCom's "customer traffic commingled with literally trillions of minutes of calls on the AT&T network each year."
"Debtors (MCI/WorldCom) were well aware that even if AT&T had known to look, AT&T could not have easily detected Debtors' high-cost calls. Indeed, even after law enforcement notified AT&T of Debtors' fraudulent diversion scheme, it took AT&T weeks to locate the diversions in the ocean of data that AT&T's network generates," AT&T said in its filing today.

Elsewhere in its filing, AT&T said that MCI/WorldCom's description of its actions in admitting diverting traffic through Canada misstate the nature of the scheme. Yet, AT&T said, the admissions MCI/WorldCom made in its filing fall under the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeal's Pattern Jury Instruction for Mail and Wire Fraud, which state in part: "A scheme to defraud is a scheme that is intended to deceive or cheat another and to … cause the loss of money or property to another."

In seeking to justify its fraudulent actions by disclosing that detailed call-routing information traveled along with the voice telephone calls, MCI/WorldCom failed to show it wasn't violating the law, AT&T said.

" … The mere fact that there is disclosure during the course of the scam does not eradicate the swindle," AT&T said. "So too, the mere fact that a carrier discloses call detail as part of a scheme to deceive or an artful stratagem does not in itself eliminate the deception."

AT&T also denied MCI/WorldCom's assertions that it had participated in shifting its costs to another carrier, saying that the instances MCI/WorldCom cited in its filing were not fraudulent activities and that the facts underlying the assertions were either wholly distinguishable from the "Canadian Gateway" scheme or irrelevant to it. (--End AT&T Press Release--)


If the Bush administration wanted to play with semantics and say they haven't snooped on any US-to-US calls (although it's becoming apparent that they have done so in some cases) the simple way would be to bulk route US-to-US calls through a third country (in this case Canada) then call that an "international intercept."

No wonder * went with the "we don't intercept domestic-to-domestic calls." Routing such calls outside of the country between end-points would mean that a simple domestic-only call suddenly becomes an international call (and all this without any knowledge of the caller or callee.)

I've spoken in Washington at InfoWarCon on the Homeland Security track...so, I wonder if I should develop this as a paper and send it to Conyers or someone else? I live in California, but was born in Michigan and admire the man greatly.

I've also wondered if it's worth developing as a topic for a speaking engagement. Needs more research, though.

(Edited to correct link.)

Privacy was important. The government needed a court order to access and hand over calling records. In 1990, I was a Bell Atlantic liaison to MCI and handled a number of requests for calling data. It was on criminal cases and looked at by lawyers before complying.

What MCI did is so far beyond the bounds of what a carrier should do it's shocking. And now the current incarnation of Bell Atlantic -- Verizon -- is merging with MCI. Go figure.

good catch, thanks

how many call center calls are from overseas?

anyone who thinks a phone call is private,
needs to grow up.

a radio signal, in a way, can go anywhere
what about that, don't people get?