By Eric Bangeman | Published: November 11, 2007 - 09:01PM CT
In addition to listening in on phone calls, the National Security Agency has also been monitoring the Internet traffic of US residents, according to a retired AT&T engineer. Whistleblower and ex-AT&T employee Mark Klein said that the telecom has been diverting IP traffic to a secret NSA listening room in San Francisco.
Klein's allegations of Internet traffic snooping were aired (QuickTime) on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann last week. The infamous room 641A in AT&T's San Francisco facility is accessible only to NSA-approved personnel, and Klein said that optical splitters sent a duplicate of every fiber optic signal routed through its facilities into equipment behind its locked doors.
The traffic snooped on by the NSA wasn't confined to AT&T's customers, either. All Internet traffic that traveled over AT&T's network was intercepted, regardless of origin, according to Klein.
"The splitter copied the entire data stream of those Internet cables into the secret room, and we're talking about phone conversations, e-mail, web browsing—everything that goes across the Internet," Klein told Olbermann. "Whatever went across those cables... the entire data stream was copied into the room."
Klein was on Capitol Hill last week to fight legislation that would give the telecoms immunity for their assistance to the NSA. So far, the telecoms have been named in over 30 lawsuits, and would dearly love a get-out-of-jail-free card from Congress. Last week, a judge ruled that AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon must maintain all data related to one of the lawsuits, even as the federal government has asserted the state secrets privilege in the spying scandal.
The judiciary appears the last hope of bringing details of the NSA's surveillance activities to light. Both the FCC and Congress have decided against investigating the legality and extent of the NSA's actions.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20 ... c-too.html
Filed under, well, yeah, duh...
I guess that makes the NSA the biggest holder of warez and mp3s ... the RIAA should go after them
