Immunity
[source: EFF]
In early 2006, a class of people represented by EFF asked a federal court in San Francisco to tell AT&T to stop providing the U.S. government with all of the domestic and international online communications of millions of people.
The drawing above shows what was going on. It’s simple. AT&T was copying all of the communications coming across its network and sending that copy to a secret, secure room controlled by the NSA. AT&T technicians installed a splitter that sent one complete version of these transmissions to the government and another complete version along its way to its intended destination. From the secret NSA room, the communications - email, voice, web browsing, everything - were probably processed and transferred to other government offices for evaluation.
(If you’re curious about the details, read this statement by Scott Marcus.)
This is and was illegal, unconstitutional, and unthinkable. It’s hard to come up with words to describe just how abusive this practice is.
This week, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein came to Washington to explain what the fiber optic splitter did, and to remind everyone that the illegal actions of AT&T didn’t just scoop up targeted international communications. This was domestic warrantless wiretapping that was exhaustive and unselective - everything was vacuumed up.
I was gripped by this video of Klein. He’s a retiree now, and he’s bravely and patiently doing the best he can to keep his former employer under pressure for its wrongful acts.
The current question is whether the telephone companies should be assured of immunity from suit. FISA is being rewritten, and there’s some sentiment in favor of treating the phone companies like patriotic citizens who did their duty when they were asked. (That the practice was illegal was not a good enough reason not to do it.) On the other hand, there’s a good deal of evidence that the telephone companies were happy to help out, and that benefits from their involvement included new federal contracts and other indicia of their close relationship to our government.
The smug, complacent answer is, so often: Well, of course they cooperated. What do you expect? That’s the way the world works.
I hope that isn’t the way the world works, I hope EFF’s lawsuit can continue, and I am glad that Mr. Klein went to Washington.