Ex AT&T Tech Says NSA Monitors All Web Traffic

Sir Tandeth writes "A former technician at AT&T, who alleges that the telecom giant forwards virtually all of its internet traffic into a 'secret room' to facilitate government spying, says the whole operation reminds him of something out of Orwell's 1984. Appearing on MSNBC's Countdown program, whistleblower Mark Klein told Keith Olbermann that all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office — to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access. 'Klein was on Capitol Hill Wednesday attempting to convince lawmakers not to give a blanket, retroactive immunity to telecom companies for their secret cooperation with the government. He said that as an AT&T technician overseeing Internet operations in San Francisco, he helped maintain optical splitters that diverted data en route to and from AT&T customers. '"

Comments

Pure FUD. Need more information.

[urcreepyneighbor]

"An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables -- e-mails, documents, pictures, Web browsing, voice-over-Internet phone conversations, everything -- was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room," he said. The words "exact", "copy", "all", "traffic", and "flowed" are open to interpretation.

The article reeks of sensationalistic journalism with an agenda.

Pure FUD. Need more information - unbiased, technical information.

Shameful

[Loundry]

It is already a totalitarianism state, you don't have to wait for it.

And yet, here you sit, typing happily on your computer, instead of wearing an orange jumpsuit in Guantanamo. I honestly think you feel good about yourself through pretending you live in a totalitarian state for the same reason that Christians enjoy hearing stories about "persecuted Christians" in third-world hell holes. The thought process sounds like this: "They hate us because they know that we're RIGHT!" Sound familiar?

Your words are, frankly, insulting to the millions of individuals who lost their liberty, lives, property, and loved ones in REAL totalitarian states. Read the Gulag Archipelago sometime and get informed.

Re:I've read about this before.

[essence]

they don't hate us for our freedom and never have while all that stuff you mention about meddling in their governments and the like may be true, the above statement is definitely NOT true. Do you understand what an Islamic fundamentalist is? Do you understand that they hate most music, they ban it if they can. They hate women having freedom to choose and do things for themselves. They ban this if they can. Have you heard of honour killings?

Don't be fooled by this 'it's all our fault' mentality folks. There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture, hate 'our freedoms'. And they want to impose their islamic law upon the world. They would kill us if they could.

FUCK THE NSA

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

May they choke to death on their own feces.

Re:I've read about this before.

[blueskies]

Don't be fooled by this 'it's all our fault' mentality folks.

This is one of the stupidest talking point i've heard someone on slashdot repeat. And that's saying something. There are plenty of countries that follow Islamic law that have terrorists blowing up people. You are saying that if the entire country followed Sharia law they'd suddenly love us? Sunnis and Shi'ites love each other right? Bah.

Re:Culture warior...

[Just Another Poster]

The estimates conducted by various organizations and by various methodologies range from 70+ thousand (based only on media reports) to 1,2 million (based on various indirect population polling methods). The Lancet study stands at around 600,000 which is in mid-range of these studies.

Reports from those who looked at figures from morgues, hospitals and cemeteries, such as the UN and the Los Angeles Times, still don't give figures anywhere near 600,000.

O'Reilly and many other media pundits were used by the planners of Iraqi invasion to uncritically disseminate and enhance their propaganda in order to shape the public opinion so that the invasion can be carried out. Every lie, exaggeration, mis-representation and innuendo deployed by the Iraqi war planners was presented as fact by O'Rilley and his co-bloviators to O'Reilly's already seriously brain-washed audience.

Reporting information is not incitement. Even if he did advocate war against the government of Iraq, there is no sane comparison to militant Islamists who call for the murder of those who refuse to submit to them.

Blaming the victims of the invasion for being "ungateful" and "unable to appreciate the great US sacrifice" is beyond riduculously hypocritical - it is the responsibility of high and mighty invaders to plan for such possibilities before hand.

That some in Iraq insist on behaving like sub-human savages is not the fault of the US, regardless of whether or not such behavior was foreseen.

The Western media has very limited access to the local affairs and its reporting relies on local, sectarian sources, of whom many also have been shot and imprisoned by the US in its Gulags for attemting to report on US and mercenary activities.

So basically according to you, news reports are to be dismissed because the reporters are either lying, or censored and tortured by the US.