Telecom Spy Lawsuits
AT&T whistle-blower, Mark Klein has told members of Congress a great deal about AT&T’s cooperation with the Bush regime to spy on overseas communications. The 22 year, AT&T technician stated that despite Bush’s claims to the contrary virtually all of America’s use of the Internet has been spied on for years.
Klein had obtained AT&T schematics showing how his former company used splitters to duplicate every fiber-optic signal routed through its facilities. This involved not just AT&T customers, but virtually every Internet and telecommunications company, and virtually all e-mail and web traffic in the country, without a warrant, without any mechanism for separating domestic from overseas, without separating suspect from patriot. Klein’s job was to connect circuits into the splitter device, which were hard wired to the room in an AT&T’s secure room, in San Francisco, accessible only to those cleared by the NSA.
Klein’s documentation and claims are now part of a class action lawsuit against AT&T, which is only one of 38 telecom spy lawsuits. The Senate is considering granting the telecom executives immunity, but Klein has lobbied Congress not to do so. Granting immunity would effectively shut down the lawsuits and the American people wouldn’t find out what’s really going on. Klein insists that Congress should let the judicial process go forward.
Klein didn’t have security clearance, but the splitter devices, he installed copied the entire data stream of Internet cables into the secure room. This included phone conversations, e-mail, web browsing, everything that comes across the Internet.
As a technician, Klein had the engineering wiring documents, which explained how the splitter was wired to the secret room and that splitter device had no selective capability, it copied everything, domestic traffic, as well as international traffic. It involved millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they’re copying wholesale and sweeping them into that secret room.
This a huge difference from the White House claim, that they were just intercepting international communications; no domestic communications were affected. Klein feels that he was assigned to connect George Orwell’s 1984, big brother machine.
Klein had obtained AT&T schematics showing how his former company used splitters to duplicate every fiber-optic signal routed through its facilities. This involved not just AT&T customers, but virtually every Internet and telecommunications company, and virtually all e-mail and web traffic in the country, without a warrant, without any mechanism for separating domestic from overseas, without separating suspect from patriot. Klein’s job was to connect circuits into the splitter device, which were hard wired to the room in an AT&T’s secure room, in San Francisco, accessible only to those cleared by the NSA.
Klein’s documentation and claims are now part of a class action lawsuit against AT&T, which is only one of 38 telecom spy lawsuits. The Senate is considering granting the telecom executives immunity, but Klein has lobbied Congress not to do so. Granting immunity would effectively shut down the lawsuits and the American people wouldn’t find out what’s really going on. Klein insists that Congress should let the judicial process go forward.
Klein didn’t have security clearance, but the splitter devices, he installed copied the entire data stream of Internet cables into the secure room. This included phone conversations, e-mail, web browsing, everything that comes across the Internet.
As a technician, Klein had the engineering wiring documents, which explained how the splitter was wired to the secret room and that splitter device had no selective capability, it copied everything, domestic traffic, as well as international traffic. It involved millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they’re copying wholesale and sweeping them into that secret room.
This a huge difference from the White House claim, that they were just intercepting international communications; no domestic communications were affected. Klein feels that he was assigned to connect George Orwell’s 1984, big brother machine.
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