[NetBehaviour] AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says.

[marc garrett]

AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says.

By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 
2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National 
Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T 
technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the 
agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other 
Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom 
providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, 
according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew 
nothing about it.

Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it 
will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications 
firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts.

Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in a position to discuss 
firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's 
domestic surveillance. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing 
his job. He carried no security clearance, and the documents in his 
possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning 
in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he 
retired in 2004.

"If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — 
well, they should suffer the consequences," Klein said.

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