Officials Seek to Protect Firms Aiding NSA Spying
WASHINGTON - For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.
But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.
The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure.
To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.
In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.
The federal government’s reliance on private industry has been driven by changes in technology. Two decades ago, telephone calls and other communications traveled mostly through the air, relayed along microwave towers or bounced off satellites. The N.S.A. could vacuum up phone, fax and data traffic merely by erecting its own satellite dishes. But the fiber optics revolution has sent more and more international communications by land and undersea cable, forcing the agency to seek company cooperation to get access.
After the disclosure two years ago that the N.S.A. was eavesdropping on the international communications of terrorism suspects inside the United States without warrants, more than 40 lawsuits were filed against the government and phone carriers. As a result, skittish companies and their lawyers have been demanding stricter safeguards before they provide access to the government and, in some cases, are refusing outright to cooperate, officials said.
“It’s a very frayed and strained relationship right now, and that’s not a good thing for the country in terms of keeping all of us safe,” said an industry official who believes that immunity is critical for the phone carriers. “This episode has caused companies to change their conduct in a variety of ways.”
With a vote in the Senate on the issue expected as early as Monday, the Bush administration has intensified its efforts to win retroactive immunity for companies cooperating with counterterrorism operations.
“The intelligence community cannot go it alone,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed article Monday urging Congress to pass the immunity provision. “Those in the private sector who stand by us in times of national security emergencies deserve thanks, not lawsuits.”
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey echoed that theme in an op-ed article of his own in The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, saying private companies would be reluctant to provide their “full-hearted help” if they were not given legal protections.
The government’s dependence on the phone industry, driven by the changes in technology and the Bush administration’s desire to expand surveillance capabilities inside the United States, has grown significantly since the Sept. 11 attacks. The N.S.A., though, wanted to extend its reach even earlier. In December 2000, agency officials wrote a transition report to the incoming Bush administration, saying the agency must become a “powerful, permanent presence” on the commercial communications network, a goal that they acknowledged would raise legal and privacy issues.
While the N.S.A. operates under restrictions on domestic spying, the companies have broader concerns - customers’ demands for privacy and shareholders’ worries about bad publicity.
In the drug-trafficking operation, the N.S.A. has been helping the Drug Enforcement Administration in collecting the phone records showing patterns of calls between the United States, Latin America and other drug-producing regions. The program dates to the 1990s, according to several government officials, but it appears to have expanded in recent years.
Officials say the government has not listened to the communications, but has instead used phone numbers and e-mail addresses to analyze links between people in the United States and overseas. Senior Justice Department officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations signed off on the operation, which uses broad administrative subpoenas but does not require court approval to demand the records.
At least one major phone carrier - whose identity could not be confirmed - refused to cooperate, citing concerns in 2004 that the subpoenas were overly broad, government and industry officials said. The executives also worried that if the program were exposed, the company would face a public-relations backlash.
The D.E.A. declined to comment on the call-tracing program, except to say that it “exercises its legal authority” to issue administrative subpoenas. The N.S.A. also declined to comment on it.
In a separate program, N.S.A. officials met with the Qwest executives in February 2001 and asked for more access to their phone system for surveillance operations, according to people familiar with the episode. The company declined, expressing concerns that the request was illegal without a court order.
While Qwest’s refusal was disclosed two months ago in court papers, the details of the N.S.A.’s request were not. The agency, those knowledgeable about the incident said, wanted to install monitoring equipment on Qwest’s “Class 5″ switching facilities, which transmit the most localized calls. Limited international traffic also passes through the switches.
A government official said the N.S.A. intended to single out only foreigners on Qwest’s network, and added that the agency believed Joseph Nacchio, then the chief executive of Qwest, and other company officials misunderstood the agency’s proposal. Bob Toevs, a Qwest spokesman, said the company did not comment on matters of national security.
Other N.S.A. initiatives have stirred concerns among phone company workers. A lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey challenging the agency’s wiretapping operations. It claims that in February 2001, just days before agency officials met with Qwest officials, the N.S.A. met with AT&T officials to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, N.J., to give the agency access to all the global phone and e-mail traffic that ran through it.
The accusations rely in large part on the assertions of a former engineer on the project. The engineer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said in an interview that he participated in numerous discussions with N.S.A. officials about the proposal. The officials, he said, discussed ways to duplicate the Bedminster system in Maryland so the agency “could listen in” with unfettered access to communications that it believed had intelligence value and store them for later review. There was no discussion of limiting the monitoring to international communications, he said.
“At some point,” he said, “I started feeling something isn’t right.”
Two other AT&T employees who worked on the proposal discounted his claims, saying in interviews that the project had simply sought to improve the N.S.A.’s internal communications systems and was never designed to allow the agency access to outside communications. Michael Coe, a company spokesman, said: “AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers’ privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security.”
But lawyers for the plaintiffs say that if the suit were allowed to proceed, internal AT&T documents would verify the engineer’s account.
“What he saw,” said Bruce Afran, a New Jersey lawyer representing the plaintiffs along with Carl Mayer, “was decisive evidence that within two weeks of taking office, the Bush administration was planning a comprehensive effort of spying on Americans’ phone usage.”
The same lawsuit accuses Verizon of setting up a dedicated fiber optic line from New Jersey to Quantico, Va., home to a large military base, allowing government officials to gain access to all communications flowing through the carrier’s operations center. In an interview, a former consultant who worked on internal security said he had tried numerous times to install safeguards on the line to prevent hacking on the system, as he was doing for other lines at the operations center, but his ideas were rejected by a senior security official.
The facts behind a class-action lawsuit in San Francisco are also shrouded in government secrecy. The case relies on disclosures by a former AT&T employee, Mark Klein, who says he stumbled upon a secret room at an company facility in San Francisco that was reserved for the N.S.A. Company documents he obtained and other former AT&T employees have lent some support to his claim that the facility gave the agency access to a range of domestic and international Internet traffic.
The telecommunications companies that gave the government access are pushing hard for legal protection from Congress. As part of a broader plan to restructure the N.S.A.’s wiretapping authority, the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to give immunity to the telecommunications companies, but the Judiciary Committee refused to do so. The White House has threatened to veto any plan that left out immunity, as the House bill does.
“Congress shouldn’t grant amnesty to companies that broke the law by conspiring to illegally spy on Americans” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.
But Bobby R. Inman, a retired admiral and former N.S.A. director who has publicly criticized the agency’s domestic eavesdropping program, says he still supports immunity for the companies that cooperated.
“The responsibility ought to be on the government, not on the companies that are trying to help with national security requirements,” Admiral Inman said. If the companies decided to stop cooperating, he added, “it would have a huge impact on both the timeliness and availability of critical intelligence.”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
If you use AT&T or Verizon, you should consider switching, immunity or not. That sends a message they won’t ignore.
These corps broke the law, knew they were breaking the law, and now the law should revoke their corporate charters as punishment. Let them be replaced by companies that obey the law and respect the rights of the people. The USG’s reasons for this whole unlawful program are bullshit. The program is nothing more than the resurgence of the McCarthyist desire to spy on everyone–wholly totalitarian.
I cannot believe that these companies would just rollover and do something ileagal and that the spys don’t have enough money to do what they have to do.Like karlof1 said…Bullshit.Tony
“In the drug-trafficking operation, the N.S.A. has been helping the Drug Enforcement Administration in collecting the phone records showing patterns of calls between the United States, Latin America and other drug-producing regions. The program dates to the 1990s, according to several government officials, but it appears to have expanded in recent years.”
The program dates back to 1990 and yet we STILL have a $60 Billion per year illegal drug industry in this country!
What bulls$it!
Big Brother is watching you.
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey … in an op-ed … in The LA Times on Wed, saying private companies would be reluctant to provide their “full-hearted help” if they were not given legal protections.
Well, you could always waterboard the CEOs to convince them to cooperate, right Mikey? After all, waterboarding is not torture.
In a surprise move earlier today Verizon acquired the CIA claiming it is the only way they can compete with AT&T’s acquisition of the NSA in 2001. This completes the Bush administration’s privatization of all publicly owned alphabet intelligence agencies; funding by Congress threatened to be withheld over InterroGate Hearings, no longer presents an obstacle to the wiretapping, illegal detainment and torture activities. No one could comment out of concern for national security.
At some point, when enough people (a.k.a.consumers) and the market catches up to what these (un)patriots have done, they will $uffer. These companies are the lowest of the low. The bottom of the barrel. Scum.
AT&T is primary the reason I didn’t buy an iPhone.
Their day will come and history in the end, will tell the tale about these awful companies.
How to deal with ‘em?: Don’t use them and Take away their (radio) spectrum. Hear THAT congress? (nah, I’m dreaming)
No eavesdropping is needed, so the NY Times is serving mainly to distract the empire subjects from what is important.
The national security of the United States simply requires reigning in the imperial aggression. As bin Laden said, you don’t see Al Qaeda terrorizing Sweden, do you? Incidentally, the drug war is merely a pretext for imperial control, but the crown jewel of pretexts is the petro-fired “American way of life, luxury and pursuit of convenience”.
The imperial blowback inflicted upon the empire is karma for the evil intentions of the empire masters and the apathy and greed of the empire subjects. Who on this planet wishes to see such an evil empire rampage on unchecked? To hell with US “strategic interests” in the Persian gulf and elsewhere. Let US citizens feel the full costs of their irresponsible energy gluttony.
Full costs are key to the general health of societies. Full costs are the solid basis behind Europe’s petro-taxes, for example. The answers are already in the palms of our hands - we simply need to feel the karma. The capitalists are censoring the news of the empire’s devastating effects, thereby enabling US citizens to devolve into irresponsible energy gluttons.
Meanwhile efforts to detect violations of the Latin American Falafel Trade Agreement (LAFTA) show few results; the free flow of falafel and Middle Eastern Cuisine in general worldwide continues unabated.
I bet this explains why no one (except an ethical few, like Kucinich) in Congress will stand up to this administration. They probably have something on the whole f****ing world by now with all their spying. It doesn’t have to be criminal, but maybe something embarrassing, or something you said in confidence that could hurt someone you love, etc.
ATip&Tap; Wire for Hire.
I’m contacting Apple and letting them know I am avoiding iphone until they admit carriers that didn’t hand our personal info over to the government in violation of federal law. Can’t hurt…
The dog-eared governmental crooks are so ripe in their rot that holding one’s nose no longer helps. Eeewwwwww!
“The federal government’s reliance on private industry has been driven by changes in technology.” This statement is false, or misleading. Moved out of context, this would imply that the massive subsidies big telecom inhales to provide for Government “needs” are all OK. Officials are protecting their “cake”, so they can eat it too and share it among friends.
The business of Government is more heinous now, more cut throat, more militant. Subsidizing a corporate monopoly in itself may have small positive benefit, but when the technology is turned and pointed right at Americans you have to wonder where the greed stopped and the hostility began. The degeneration is always subtle before it’s way too late.
Zhongman is right. Even if Congress cravenly grants immunity for their blatant violation of their customers’ trust and constitutional rights, we can punish them–and deter future violators–by boycotting the offending companies. This would send a loud, clear message to the executive suites and boardrooms that the American people take their rights seriously, even if Congress and the courts do not.
Soon government officials will be increasing their sales of competitive advantage information obtained through NSA wiretaps. All political party plans will be in the hands of the controlling interests. Those companies still having to bid competitively for government contracts will just be paying vigorish to get the inside scoop on any possible competitors.
“God bless America!”
“Place your head firmly between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.”
And who is your broker?
The bad guys are winning.
I am so disgusted in our leaders: now we see Gore’s 2000 choice for Vice President backing McCain in 2008.
This all makes my stomach turn.
These people are not in the politics for anyone but themselves.
Sad.
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey echoed that theme in an op-ed article of his own in The Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, saying private companies would be reluctant to provide their “full-hearted help” if they were not given legal protections
That’s the idea, isn’t it?
If you’re looking for the “Army Knew of Cheating” article, it is here:
- http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/16/5854/
This is just another example of corporate welfare. This is indicitive of a complicated plan obviously concieved of well before 9/11. First, we have the so-called energy bill created by the dick behind closed doors. Was this really an energy bill or rather a conspiracy to pay back the campaign fund donators.
As anyone with any brains is aware, the bush crime families biggest contributors were….the saudis.
Look how they were brought back from the brink of bankruptcy by 300% higher oil prices…all for the sake of conservation according to the dick. Then we have the billions of dollars given to the airlines
while they were tearing down working, existing airports to create their new palaces while monopolizing these new airports AND breaking the unions. Then we have AT&T. They went from the single, huge arrogant phone company to just another poorly run enterprise with a lot of competition in what 10 years? How much money have they recieved to spy on us? That should be the real question here.
And..what is the new tax rate for the thieves? I believe that they should be offered NO immunity for knowingly breaking the law. Plus, when this was started it was supposedly for terrorist investigations now its also for crime. What is these assholes definition of “crime”? Lying to congress?
Cheating elections? Accepting BILLIONS of illegally funneled dollars for campaign financing? After all, if the chimp offered you a toot of coke, even though you are doing it with the so-called president under the watchful supervision of the secret service, you are still breaking the law. Remember, should you be sodomized by a republican senator in a state where sodomy is illegal, you are still committing a crime so whats next?
The telecom companies were well aware of the illegality of their actions and should be liable for them. This is one bill that should be stalled until the elections in 2008. If the chimp can veto, the dems should start stalling. Tell chimpy that we will address this AFTER S-CHIPS, TAX REFORM, AN ENERGY BILL THAT REVOKES THE 21BILLION DOLLAR TAX BREAK FOR THE OIL COMPANIES, VETERAN BENIFIETS AND A FUCKING WITHDRAWAL PLAN. Then tell him we still do not have time because now we are going to start impeaching the whole lot.
NO IMMUNITY….HANG JANE
mcpete; You laid it out very well. Unfortunately the American people are more interested in ‘American Idol’ and things of that nature. That gives them an adrenalin rush. Very few of us are alarmed about the course of events these past eight years. The ‘rulling class’ has succeeded in producing a nation of professional killers and bullies ( the military and the taser robocops) and a nation of eunuchs that go along with the program.
Terry Gilliam’s movie, “BRAZIL” is worth watching again.
It’s interesting that people still make a distinction between the spying conducted by Big Brother and the spying conducted by Big Brother’s own Brother, private industry.
I started messing around with Google Street View and got a pretty good view of my house. You can even zoom in a bit on the flowers I planted in my front yard. You can also “drive” into public areas and see still photos of people. Remember, also, that GMail is mined for content, for “targetted ads”. Remember, also, that public libraries have had to abide by privacy laws, but Google Books — presumably — retains usage patterns, ostensibly for “ad purposes”.
Arguably, socialism and fascism offer the same corporate-government hybrid, the main difference is which entity takes over which, which quickly becomes a moot point. Given that the military itself (i.e. “private contactors”) is increasingly a function of private industry today, why should we draw distinction between Big Brother of government and Big Brother of industry? They’re increasingly one in the same.
Why would our phones not constantly transmit all audio and video information, whether on or off, to the databases of the masters.
Invaluable that info would be to both homeland security and advertisers….once homeland security processes your info, (if your not a terrorist) then they sell your info to the advertisers.
Hence if you don’t consume enough to fit into a specific consumer profile then you must be terrorists.
Which boils down to…Non-consumer = terrorist
Consumer = non terrorists
Unless you’re buying bomb parts, uranium, weapons, etc. That puts one into a gray zone.
Sorry, couldn’t resist (second time in about 2 minutes…)
Why don’t we all just SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FIGHT TO ABOLISH THE CIA, FBI, DEA, NSA, WARFARE, CORPORATE WELFARE, CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, etc … ! There, PROBLEM SOLVED !
Maxpayne …I’m with you. How do you suggest we do it?
Notice that some of the data being gathered is just contact info (who called who) that they plug into social networking software. It’s the same type of data they, without opening anything, can get from anything that goes through the United States Postal Service.
It’s probably not even illegal since it’s data you are supplying to the government/Postal Service to get your letter/package delivered.
I wonder if they’ve asked UPS, FedEx or DCL for their shipment records.
If it is “probably not illegal” then why do they require immunity? So when I mail a letter, do they open it and read it? You wonder if they have asked UPS….. Did you just get off of some boat or something?
It reminds me of a documentary on the ‘White Rose’ in Nazi Germany. If ‘ordinary’ German citizens were caught with a typewriter in their homes or apartments, the friendly Gestapo agents would take them in for interrogation. “What were you writing and to whom did you give it to read?”, questions to that effect. Some folks were released after they convinced the ‘homeland security’ investigators they wrote nothing unkind about the Fuher and his thousand year plan for peace and prosperity. Others were tortured, some were imprisoned, and others quickly executed. Spys galore.
“The more things change, the more they remain the same.”
Do you still think we have representative government? I’m talking about John and Joan Q Public. We know who is really represented by our shamless politicians.
McPete - I wasn’t saying the government’s collusion with the phone companies isn’t illegal. It’s pretty clear it is. I was saying that the same type of contact info (who called who) is available on the outside of envelopes (from/to). That’s info you give to the postal service with the expectation that they will use it. With phone calls you clearly have an expectation of privacy (unlike, say, garbage which the courts have ruled has no privacy expectation/protection so the government is free to go through it). I don’t know the legal status of information on the outside of an envelope but, I’m sure the government would raise the issue that you expect the postal service (a government agency) to use it. You expect privacy for the contents, the question here is do you have an expectation of privacy for what is on the outside of the envelope.
They aren’t asking for immunity for a mail surveillance program. As far as I know no one has accused them of any program like this (i.e. a program that plugs all the to/from data of U.S. mail into software that shows social networks based on contacts). But I think if they’re pulling in info from outside the government, it’s pretty likely that they’d try to use similar information freely given to a government agency.
Let me clarify something. When you mail a letter, at best the post office MAY track zip codes. That is about all. When you make any type of personal communication using a computer on the internet or cell phone call or wired phone it is plain and simple, these communications are ALL stored on a hard drive and then data mined. Have you ever noticed those phone boxes out near the street. That is the switch gear that is being tapped. If any key words or phrases are extracted during the mining operation, the complete transmission is analyzed. In effect,
ALL communications are permanently stored somewhere.
THAT IS ILLEGAL. It also makes it hard for me to believe that the e-mails from the white house have been destroyed. So basically, what we have here is a bill that deals with thieves and liars and gives them immunity from all that they have done illegally.
To make matters worse, there has been a law on the books for almost 40 years that makes all of these actions clearly illegal but allows for a remedy allowing them to do this under guidance by FISA.
They have elected to freely break the law AND have admitted it on record. There can be NO excuse for not following an existing law AND for allowing any person working under the shield of OUR government
to violate OUR Constitutional Rights so flagrantly.
It is not even a subject of symantics like this waterboarding bullshit which these same assholes regard as “almost torture”. I firmly believe that chimpy and the dick should be waterboarded and forced to answer questions put to them by Waxman. Think those jerkoffs would like that? HANG JANE!
McPete - You’re probably right about the data tracked by the USPS (although there are some interesting things here: http://www.eng.buffalo.edu/IgnitingIdeas/pdf/Igniting4.pdf and here: http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/resources/collaborators.html ).
That’s not the case for UPS, DCL and FedEx.
As is so often the case with major NY Times hard news stories, the most explosive tidbits are tucked away inside.
This Sunday Times article by Lichtblau, Risen and Shane is within that tradition. It ledes and closes with horse race style speculation about who will win and who will lose the latest power struggle in the game of beltway legislative skullduggery. In my opinion, the really important “news” in this news article gets reported sprinkled around in the middle of the text, where busy readers may skip on past, oblivious.
We are told in paragraph four “To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on conditions of anonymity…..” Later in the article we learn “In the drug-trafficking operation, the NSA has been helping the Drug Enforcement Administration in collecting the phone records showing patterns of calls between the United States, Latin America and other drug producing regions…..”
Well, so much for the famous firewall that once existed between the FBI and the CIA, the one so patiently crafted to respect the differences between surveillance undertaken for purposes of ordinary criminal law enforcement, and surveillance undertaken for national security or counter-espionage purposes.
Since when has the high power, high tech National Security Agency, operating on American soil, been “helping” mundane law enforcement entities like the federal DEA by gathering up (and sharing) records about American citizens who make phone calls to family, friends or associates south of the Rio Grande? Is the full range of NSA’s spectacular (and spectacularly intrusive) electronic surveillance technology similarly being loaned out to the narcs, in a spirit of civic minded cooperation?
Some of the spooks in love with black ops, and some of the cops in love with hi tech gadgetry, have been salivating for years to swap hats and turn loose the full range of operational spyware originally honed for use against the KGB against ordinary criminal suspects inside the United States. I guess the NSA and DEA have taken this first, tentative, clandestine mission sharing step together at this particular point in time for deeply classified reasons, and right now they’re just sort of waiting to see if there’s any big public outcry.
Close as I can tell, not much of anybody has even noticed that the spies have begun dancing openly with the police.
Later in the Times article, we have a reprise on how NSA approached AT and T officials “to discuss replicating a network center in Bedminster, New Jersey…..” at the same time that a lawsuit accused Verizon “of setting up a dedicated fiber optic line from New Jersey to Quantico, Va., home to a large military base, allowing government officials to gain access to all communications flowing through the carrier’s operations center…..”
These projects, like the optic cable splitter installed in San Francisco, is simply Project Omnivore resurrected and revisited. Suck it all up and store it for as long as you can in as big a catch basin or data reservoir as you can (and the latest technology has made storage space exponentially greater than ever even imagined earlier). Don’t monitor. Just vaccuum it all up, and preserve it forever, like on a giant, perpetually operating video surveillance camera in the public square.
If a day later, or a week or month later, or even years later, conventional police works unearths evidence that Johnny Jones recently used his cell phone to further some illegal purpose, go get your wiretap warrant (or a FISA warrant, if you think Johnny is involved in illegalities that threaten national security).
With a court-ordered wiretap to monitor Johnny’s future cell phone use, why not also go take a peek backward in time? Now that you’ve got the target, go pull up all of Johnny Jones’ cell phone calls from the data reservoir - days, weeks, months, or years of cell phone traffic - and listen to it now.
Why not? I mean, we’ve got prior judicial approval NOW to listen in on what Johnny says in the future on his cell phone, so why not go BACK in time too?
All it is, is a matter of developing and deploying the techonogy, the snoops will argue. Nobody listens in. Nobody invades anybody’s privacy. We just keep a second, separate verbatim record of every call, every transmission, every data bit and byte.
We just store it away, for future potential retrieval if an only if a judge signs off and says we can. Trust us.
There really ought to be a law against illegally taping everybody’s phone calls, all at the same time.
And there is.
And they all knew it.
That’s what’s really newsworthy about the telecoms’ collusion with the National Security Agency in San Francisco, in Bedminster, New Jersey, and in Quantico, Virginia.
Bill from Saginaw
I live in an area of high Arab content. You should see all of the work going on by AT&T. Before, you couldnt get the assholes out for any reason, now they are camped out anywhere a switch box is located.
What do you think they are up too?