The Most Powerful, Well Connected Company You've Never Heard Of

Have you ever heard of a tech company called Neustar? Probably not, and that’s just the way the government wants to keep it. Neustar is a relatively new company that is playing a large, albeit secret, role in the expansion of the surveillance state. According to published reports, Neustar handles the law enforcement surveillance and user data requests for over 400 telecommunications companies. To accommodate their clients’ demands, Neustar maintains a database containing information on every cell phone in the United States — including yours.

As The New American reported recently, in a report issued by cellphone carriers, the mobile phone providers indicated that last year they received 1.3 million demands from “law enforcement agencies” for access to the text messages and locations of subscribers to the cellphone companies’ service. A New York Times article covering the report provided the following breakdown of the requests for information received by the various cell companies:

AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena. That is roughly triple the number it fielded in 2007, the company said. Law enforcement requests of all kinds have been rising among the other carriers as well, with annual increases of between 12 percent and 16 percent in the last five years. Sprint, which did not break down its figures in as much detail as other carriers, led all companies last year in reporting what amounted to at least 1,500 data requests on average per day.

As for the police, they insist that using a cell signal or a record of text messages or data received or sent using a phone makes tracking a person so much simpler. An interview with a member of law enforcement included in the Times article is very enlightening as to the desire on the part of police to keep this weapon in their arsenal.

“At every crime scene, there’s some type of mobile device,” said Peter Modafferi, chief of detectives for the Rockland County district attorney’s office in New York, who also works on investigative policies and operations with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The need for the police to exploit that technology “has grown tremendously, and it’s absolutely vital,” he said in an interview.

It is noteworthy to remind readers that Neustar is not a cellphone company. It is a partner with those companies in providing the signal that carries wireless communications across this country every second. It is this “behind the scenes” aspect of Neustar’s position in the surveillance of Americans that affords it such a powerful influence.

One hint as to the potential potency of Neustar (and other companies like it operating in the shadows of the massive surveillance infrastructure being built by our government) is the origin of the company itself. Read this little piece of corporate history posted on the Neustar website:

1996 — Neustar — then the Communications Industry Services (CIS) operating unit within Lockheed Martin — won its original contract to provide local number portability [LNP] services to select regions throughout North America. Since that time, Neustar has assumed LNP responsibilities for all geographic regions throughout the United States and Canada as the operator of the Number Portability Administration Center (NPAC). Neustar subsequently launched wireless number portability to much of the North American market in 2003.

1997 — Neustar won the contract to become the official North American Numbering Plan (NANP) administrator, a position we have held ever since. The NANP is a system of three-digit area codes and seven-digit telephone numbers that directs telephone calls to particular regions on a public switched telephone network.

Read more here: http://thenewamerican.com/tech/item/12148-the-most-powerful-well-connected-company-youve-never-heard-of