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Whistleblower Lobbies Against Telco Immunity
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-11-08
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Mark Klein has been at the epicenter of a class-action lawsuit against AT&T to determine if they illegally wiretapped millions of Americans and shared their findings with the National Security Agency.
 | | Whistleblower Lobbies Against Telco Immunity |  |
Since the end of January 2006, Klein's whistleblowing served as the impetus for the suit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T.
Documents he provided to the EFF described how the NSA placed equipment in a secret room in a San Francisco switching facility, and used that equipment to capture all traffic traveling through it.
Attempts by both AT&T and the Bush Administration to stop the lawsuit have been denied by the presiding judge.
In turn, the White House has been trying to push "telecom immunity" legislation through Congress that would hold the telcos blameless for activities conducted at the behest of the government between 2001 and 2006.
TPMmuckraker noted Klein's visit to Washington DC, where he criticized President Bush over a surveillance program that may have had roots in place early in 2001:
"These are not babes in woods. They knew what they were doing," Klein said. "The violation of the Constitution is where they split off -- where the splitter splits off full copies of a datastream, and connects to other companies' internet stuff, like Sprint or GlobalCrossing.
They don't want people to understand that.
They want to portray it like the president does, that it's a handful of international phone calls.
That's the soundbite, and that's not true. It affects millions of people domestically."
Klein also demonstrated some clear-minded thinking in the wake of his whirlwind visit to the Capitol, which included meeting with several notable politicians.
"I'm not impressed by people with speeches pretending to be on (the American public's) side," he said. "I want to see votes. In our favor."
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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