BAD HARDWARE WEEK

Glimmerglass, a northern California company that sells optical fiber technology, offers government agencies a software product called “CyberSweep” to intercept signals on undersea cables. The company says their technology can analyze Gmail and Yahoo! Mail as well as social media like Facebook and Twitter to discover “actionable intelligence.”
Could this be the technology that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) is using to tap global communications? The company says it counts several intelligence agencies among its customers but refuses to divulge details. One thing is certain – it is not the only company to offer such capabilities – so if such data mining is not already taking place, that day is not far off.
“Revolutions in communications technologies are usually followed by revolutions in collection capabilities,” Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archives.
“With Glimmerglass Intelligent Optical Systems, any signal travelling over fiber can be redirected in milliseconds, without adversely affecting customer traffic. At a landing site, this connectivity permits optical layer connections between the wet side and dry side to be re-provisioned in milliseconds from the Network Operations Center with a few clicks of a mouse.”
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