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. '"

New meaning to the phrase...

[NotQuiteReal]

Come take a drink from the firehose!

Whoa

[yamamushi]

Thats a LOT of porn!

iphone spam

[CodyRazor]

i wonder how long it too them to sift through all the "iv got an iphone!!" messages...

Why else to you think it's going to San Fransisco?

[StressGuy]

I mean, really.....

Re:I've read about this before.

[PhreakinPenguin]

So if I post 4 images of the EXTERIOR of the main AT&T building, can I get modded informative too?

It's like some bad Soviet Russia joke...

[Overzeetop]

..but with extra "bad" and no "joke".

Olbermann?

[MarsDefenseMinister]

Come on, that Countdown program is just about as biased left as you can get. I guess bias for the liberal side is called news, and bias for conservatives is an outrage, requiring an attack dog like Media Matters. It's a good thing that Fox News exists, or there would be no conservative voices in the media at all.

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[truthsearch]

If only there were some device which could look at each packet that's passed through it and determine where to send it... To route the packets, if you will...

Re:I've read about this before.

[Luke Dawson]

As bills get passed to erode the freedom of American's, I'm watching the US slowly descend into totalitarianism.

Actually, it's a really clever way of defeating terrorism, one that the terrorists will never catch on to! You see, since they hate us for our freedom, if we eliminate all of these pesky freedoms, the terrorists will have nothing to hate us for anymore! See, it makes perfect sense :)

I really don't see what the problem is

[__aailob1448]

The NSA are the good guys, therefore, any traffic monitoring they do will be used to catch the bad guys. Since we are good guys*, we have nothing to fear.

NOTHING!

*Unless you smoke weed, use p2p or jaywalk, in which case you're a bad guy and you deserve to go to jail.

Re:I've read about this before.

[Duhavid]

Maybe the room is like TARDIS, bigger on the inside
than on the outside?

Re:"All" internet traffic?

[camperdave]

That's true, but what if they only kept a record of the text data? If you strip away all the audio/video content from today's web pages, the resulting data isn't that bad.

I_eot_ne__it
'tr_raarmene
mhewa_lrex_x
_a_anc_oscct
gtiysrorsel.
l_s_miriape
at_tim_sgta
dhnotitte_r

Re:I've read about this before.

[j_166]

Leprechauns?

Re:Shameful

[Stanislav_J]

The NSA does not care about monitoring geeks in their Mom's basement.

Except maybe on breaks, when they need a good laugh...

Re:Whoa

[HerrEkberg]

Why did you think the room is locked?

Re:Encrypt

[Stanislav_J]

No warrant, no searches or seizures of my stuff. They are particularly prohibited from searching through all of my correspondence without a warrant.

A warrant? That's so 20th Century.....

Culture warior...

[WallaceAndGromit]

There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture...

What, like this one [amazon.com]?

Oh Come On, People!

[Greyfox]

The NSA has implemented what has GOT to be the BIGGEST PORN GATHERING SYSTEM OF ALL TIME, and all we can do is bitch and moan about how our rights are being infringed? We should be hitting the agents at our nearest branch office up for copies! Hey secret agent man, I got 4 empty 1tb drives here, how about topping me off? Aww yea, me likey teh nasty!

I am SO never getting a job with those guys...

Re:I've read about this before.

[porkchop_d_clown]

Oh yeah? Go take pictures of important buildings in the middle of the day across town and see if you don't get questioned by the police after a few hours?

If it takes you a couple of hours to take pictures of the outside of the building, I would expect the police to pick you up. And give you a breathalizer, a drug test and to check if you were an escapee from the Home For The Easily Bewildered.

Re:I've read about this before.

[eli pabst]

Bin Laden has actually flat out said on at least 2 tapes that the US could avoid being attacked again if we converted to Islam. You can think whatever you like, but that is straight from the horses mouth.