BBtv vlog (Xeni): ATT-NSA whistleblower Mark Klein, EFF legal director Cindy Cohn
In 2005, Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, brought to public attention documents which showed that the National Security Agency had obtained copies of Internet traffic flowing through an AT&T facility in San Francisco and through several other AT&T locations across the country.
This led to public outcry over the US government's warrantless wiretapping program, and a lawsuit against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation .
At the 2008 EFF Pioneer Awards ceremony during the O'Reilly ETech conference, the EFF honored Klein's whistleblowing efforts. In this interview at the awards ceremony, Klein and EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn speak with us about efforts to persuade lawmakers not to grant legal immunity to telecoms that may have broken the law while helping the government in anti-terrorism efforts.
On March 6, 2008, another whistleblower came forward with similar claims. Computer security consultant Babak Pasdar said he'd discovered a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" while working for an unnamed major wireless carrier.
He believes this circuit gives the U.S. government direct, high-speed access to customers' voice and data transmissions.
For more information: EFF.org.
Update: Wired's Threat Level blog posted about this BBtv episode just now, and reminds us...
And just to toot our own horn, although Wired wasn't the first to write about the Klein documents, we did acquire them while they were under court seal (from a party not subject to the gag order) and publish them for geeks of the world to analyze. (Explanation here.)
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The Verizon add is precious.
This is fabulous. I am in the midst of finishing/submitting my application for a legal internship with EFF this week.