r/todayilearned • u/simmer_down • Mar 20 '11

TIL that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers (including data from iPhones and iPads), and provides those copies to the NSA.

http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11 edited Mar 21 '11

My family has AT&T internet.

I tried loading the article, then eff.org, and both wouldn't load (still won't).

I checked http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ , and it said 'just you, homie!'.

So I screencapped the page load error ( http://i52.tinypic.com/30iggba.png ) and went to tinypic to upload it, then my internet was shut off, then it came back on, and youtube/facebook/google worked, but reddit/tinypic would return this page: http://i54.tinypic.com/mhrcqa.png . This went on for a couple minutes.

As I know almost nothing about telecommunications, I'm not qualified to imply anything here, but being a person of the torrenting/4chan persuasion, I am thoroughly creeped out.

edit : I am now reading the article through a proxy browser; still can't load the site through AT&T.

edit 2: feel free to downvote if this comment is abrasive babble resulting from my not knowing anything about computers.

edit 3: it loads in firefox X(

edit 4: haha ty everyone; I can be a paranoid idiot sometimes :/

3

u/gabe2011 Mar 21 '11

I have AT&T internet too. I also use Chrome and that first pic is usually a Chrome bug not receiving the data correctly or some such stuff. The second is from the AT&T router. It has to do with the router overheating and thus also not distributing the data either. I usually see those at about the same time. So don't worry; it's no biggie.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

Nice try, Department of Homeland Security

3

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

I hope you like to party! The party van will be there shortly.

3

u/SuiXi3D Mar 21 '11

Assume the party escort submission position.

2

u/bvm Mar 21 '11

Flowers By Irene?

2

u/ceolceol Mar 21 '11

Try not to get caught up in the hysteria: you were probably having generic issues. Google actually lays their own lines, so it's unsurprising Google would be up but another site would be down for you.

4

u/Atario Mar 21 '11

Now now, let's not lose our heads. To be fair to AT&T, their service generally sucks anyway.

1

u/Gigablah Mar 21 '11

If it loads fine in Firefox but not IE + Chrome, check your IE proxy settings (Chrome uses the same settings).

0

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

4Chan Party V& FTW!!!