The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T for its cooperation in the government's domestic spying program. On March 31st, based on witness accounts and documents they have filed under seal.
Mark Klein was an AT&T technician for 22 years, who is now retired. During the course of his employment, he learned details of a secret room that was set up at AT&T headquarters in San Francisco. The rooms are only accessible to individuals who hold an NSA clearance, however, none of the information that was available to him was marked as top secret or classified.
Wired.com has published his documents here, and explain why they have done so here. They have joined the EFF, as well as a body of other news organizations to unseal this evidence. On May 15th, the US government filed a motion for dismissal.
Mark Klein's affidavit, claims that he observed the creation of a secret room and that the room contains surveillance equipment, particularly, the Narus Semantic Traffic Analyzer.
Narus makes network interception devices for businesses and ISP's to monitor network traffic. Narus software and hardware can capture and analyze data moving at high speeds (10GB/s). The software can recreate webpages, databases, oh, and this is comforting: VOIP phone conversations.
Mark Klein, the EFF and others have alleged that AT&T has installed these types of systems directly into live Common Backbones (CBB):
Another “Cut-In and Test Procedure” document dated January 24, 2003, provides diagrams of how AT&T Core Network circuits were to be run through the “splitter” cabinet (pdf 7). One page lists the circuit IDs of key Peering Links which were “cut-in” in February 2003 (pdf 8), including ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, Abovenet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet, and Mae West. By the way, Mae West is one of two key Internet nodal points in the United States (the other, Mae East, is in Vienna, Virginia). It's not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on—it's the entire Internet.
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