IP Democracy: AT&T Loses Round in NSA Wiretapping Litigation

Following up on Mitch’s solid analysis of whether MCI or AT&T (as opposed to Verizon and SBC) were approached by the feds to turn over calling record data, it’s clear that AT&T (the former long distance company now part of a merged SBC-AT&T) was working in some capacity with the NSA on wire-tapping activities. In fact, a long-standing lawsuit brought by the EFF that accuses AT&T of allowing the government to tap into its lines got some courtroom action today, and AT&T lost a big fight. (More on the EFF’s case here.)

Wired News reports that a federal judge in San Francisco shot down “AT&T’s efforts to recover and suppress internal documents that a former AT&T technician says demonstrate the company’s collusion in illegal government surveillance.” The judge rejected a motion by AT&T that would have, if granted, forced EFF to return documents from an AT&T whistleblower, which the telco claims contain trade secrets and other proprietary information.

Wired News actually posted some of the documents in question and they’re a fascinating read. Mark Klein, the technician formerly employed by AT&T, seemed to have memorialized for himself (and others) troubling activities going on at the telco while he worked there. Although I can’t quite figure out what these documents exactly are, they seem to be akin to “memos to the file.” Here’s one excerpt:

I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic.

Here’s another example:

In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

While much of Klein’s discussion is focused on the technical set-up of the wiretapping activity, he returns again and again to the “secret room” which only people who had NSA security clearances were allowed to enter.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the “secret room,” which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company’s endless “downsizings,” but he was quickly replaced by another.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 17, 2006 7:40 PM to IP Democracy