US is the world's telecom switchboard

AN ACCIDENT of history made the US the hub of most of the world's telecommunications traffic, says a story at Wired.

The reason is that international long-distance tariffs established over 100 years ago by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) allowed smaller and developing countries to charge more than US common carriers to route phone calls through their facilities.

As one result, most telecommunications interconnects between countries outside the US are still switched through US facilities because that's less expensive than more geographically direct routes through and to regional and neighboring countries in Latin America, Europe and even parts of Asia.

As a second result, the US National Security Agency (NSA) is uniquely well positioned to intercept most international telephone and Internet communications at US switchboards.

The RESTORE Act legislation introduced in the US Congress Tuesday would allow the NSA to maintain permanent spying operations inside US telecommunications switching facilities. µ

L'INQ
Wired