Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT&T

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: EEkid () aol com
Date: May 13, 2006 8:01:24 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT&T

Whistleblower outs NSA's secret spy room at AT&T

April 08, 2006

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, said the  
company shunted all Internet traffic--including traffic from peering  
links connecting to other Internet backbone providers-- to semantic  
traffic analyzers, installed in a secret room inside the AT&T central  
office on Folsom Street in San Francisco. Similar rooms were built in  
Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

"Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue,  
it appears the NSA (National Security Agency) is capable of  
conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the  
data crossing the Internet," Klein said. "This potential spying  
appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of Internet  
communications of countless citizens."

In 2003, the National Security Agency set up a secret room inside the  
phone company's San Francisco office building that was not accessible  
to AT&T technicians, Klein said.

The former employee's statement, as well as several documents saved  
by him after he left the company in 2004, shows further evidence of  
domestic spying initiatives by the federal government.

Klein's statement is being incorporated into a class action filed in  
San Francisco federal court, in which lawyers with the Electronic  
Frontier Foundation (EFF), Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman &  
Robbins, and Traber & Voorhees in Pasadena claim that AT&T illegally  
allowed the NSA taps.

"Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record  
of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the  
NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or  
is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA [the  
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]," Klein said.

News that the NSA was working with major telecommunications companies  
first surfaced shortly before Christmas. The Bush administration has  
acknowledged the existence of a domestic spying program, but claims  
the executive order was limited to those individuals with known  
terrorist ties.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a class-action lawsuit  
against AT&T on January 31, 2006, accusing the telecom giant of  
violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating  
with the National Security Agency in its massive program to wiretap  
and data-mine Americans' communications.

"The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is  
diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in  
violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," EFF  
Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston said in a statement.



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