Ryan Singel
Security

AT&T Whistle-Blower Hits D.C. To Stop Telecom Spying Immunity

Former AT&T technician and wiretapping whistle-blower Mark Klein traveled to the nation’s marble halls of power Wednesday, hoping to persuade lawmakers not to crush the lawsuit against AT&T that is largely based on his allegations that his former employer wiretapped the internet on behalf of the government. The Senate Judiciary plans Thursday to mark-up a measure passed by […]
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Former AT&T technician and wiretapping whistle-blower Mark Klein traveled to the nation's marble halls of power Wednesday, hoping to persuade lawmakers not to crush the lawsuit against AT&T that is largely based on his allegations that his former employer wiretapped the internet on behalf of the government.

The Senate Judiciary plans Thursday to mark-up a measure passed by the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee would let telecoms like AT&T and Verizon escape the bevy of lawsuits accusing them of massively violating Americans' privacy, so long as the attorney general writes a letter to the judge saying that the government told the companies that the president thought he had Constitutional authority to evade the nation's privacy laws.

In January 2006, after the Los Angeles Times killed an article on his allegations after editors met with senior government officials, Klein walked into the Electronic Frontier Foundation and handed them a set of AT&T documents he took with him when he retired.

Those documents detail how AT&T diverted portions of fiber optic internet cables, -included powerful snooping hardware and a fat fiber connection out of the room.

The EFF filed those documents under seal with the court as part of their ongoing class action suit against AT&T. Wired News independently acquired and published the documents in May 2006 – see editor's note here.

Even prior to the Senate Intelligence committee's assent to the president's push for immunity for the telecoms, Klein believed that Congress was helping the administration cover up the spying, according to an interview with Wired News in May.

I've called and sent letters to senators and Congress members. They haven't called back. I don't think they want to pursue it. They want to talk about this behind closed doors. These days I am angry at Congress for helping them keep it secret.

They could hold hearings and subpoena people and give them immunity. Right now there are people who could come forward and say what they know, but they need immunity. That's the bottleneck. I don't see a resolution coming from this Congress. It's a conspiracy against the American people.

But on Wednesday, Klein had a full D.C. day – meeting with senators and Congressional staffers and doing rounds of interviews with the press, who have largely ignored the soft-spoken retiree.

Klein's stated intent for the visit is to stop Congress from giving immunity to well-connected telecom firms that the administration and its platoon of consent manufacturers say are being treated unfairly.

He told Wired News in May that he wants more than just that, though:

I want this program ended. I will be satisfied when I can get a tour of the Folsom Street building and I can see the equipment has been ripped out. I want to see the physical stuff ripped out. I will not be satisfied with assurances from the government that this program is stopped or being overseen by a court.

They have embedded spying into the infrastructure of the internet. I'm not sure people are fully conscious of what is going on, and I want it exposed and stopped.

Read more from the New York Times and TPM Muckraker's Spencer Ackerman.

You can see Klein speak here in this video from Senator Christopher Dodd's campaign site.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9aeKF-rOGA See Also: