The Wire Tap Rooms! By: Ryan Gallagher And Henrik Moltke (The Intercept June 25, 2018)
We just published a report revealing eight fortress-like buildings in U.S. cities — each owned by AT&T — that the NSA uses for internet surveillance. The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program. Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.
Link To Entire Intercept Article: https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/
Edward Snowden en has called our report “the most important surveillance story you will see for years.”
"The most important surveillance story you will see for years just went online, revealing how @ATT became the internet's biggest enemy, secretly collaborating against its customers and partners to destroy your privacy."
In 2006, "Whistleblower” Mark Klein told the story of the illegal government spying apparatus installed at an AT&T office by the National Security Agency, and his battle to bring it to light and protect Americans’ 4th Amendment rights. After the New York Times revealed in 2005 that the NSA was spying on Americans’ phone calls and e-mail without Constitutionally-required court warrants, the Bush administration openly defended this practice which also violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. All details of the highly secret program remained hidden from the public—until Klein came forward. A technician for over 22 years at telecom giant AT&T, Klein was working in the Internet room in San Francisco in 2003 and discovered the NSA was vacuuming everyone’s communications into a secret room, and he had the documents to prove it (sample pages included). He went to the media in 2006, and then became a witness in a lawsuit brought against the company by the Electronic Frontier Foundation."
Link To Purchase Mark Klein Book – Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine … And Fighting It: https://www.amazon.com/Wiring-Big-Brother-Machine-Fighting/dp/1439229961
Labor Notes Article By: Jenny Brown July 09, 2014
Many are shocked by the indiscriminate U.S. government spying revealed by Edward Snowden, the contract employee who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency in June. We shouldn’t have been. Signs of this program stretch back more than a decade, and received plenty of media attention in 2006. Much of that attention was due to revelations by a union AT&T technician in San Francisco, Mark Klein, who noticed and documented suspicious activities at his workplace. He wrote and published a book Wiring Up the Big Brother Machine—And Fighting It detailing his experiences.
Labor Notes interviewed him last week about what he found then, and about the new revelations.
” Excerpt From Labor Notes Interview” What was your union's response?
“To my knowledge, in public my union, the Communications Workers, said and did nothing on the issue and basically took a dive. But I did get some friendly comments from a couple CWA officials when my book came out in 2009, including a nice card from an official of my former local, and a bold public statement of support from the then-president of Chicago-area CWA Local 4250, Steve Tisza, on his local’s website. I also received some encouraging email from my former colleagues at AT&T.”
Download Labor Notes Interview of Mark Klein At: http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2013/07/interview-att-tech-blew-whistle-nsa-spying-2006
