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 to
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.
Link to BBtv vlog post, with discussion, downloadable video, and more information on the case.
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.)