Wired publishes secret AT&T whistleblower docs

Posted by Deanna Zandt at 7:04 AM on May 22, 2006.

A while back, I posted about an AT&T technician who blew the whistle on the company's "secret tech room" that routed its circuits through NSA data mining technology; since then, the EFF has filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

Then things started moving like we were all taking part in some John Grisham novel ("The Spying?" "The Data Miner?"). About a week ago, the US government secretly moved to have the case against AT&T dismissed because it could "harm national security." Then AT&T moved to have a closed courtroom for the hearings, which was denied. Then AT&T moved to have the whistelblower's documents banned from testimony and returned to them without question, which was also denied.

The judge decided, though, that the whistleblower documents should remain sealed "for now." But today, Wired News made the bold move and decided that the public's right to know far outweighed any "trade secrets" that AT&T thinks are in the docs (read: how they routed all their traffic to the NSA), and have published the documents. In an editorial note, editor-in-chief Evan Hansen had this to say:

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

As a result, we are publishing the complete text of a set of documents from the EFF's primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein -- information obtained by investigative reporter Ryan Singel through an anonymous source close to the litigation. The documents, available on Wired News as of Monday, consist of 30 pages, with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight pages of AT&T documents marked "proprietary," and several pages of news clippings and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.

This week, we are joining in efforts to bring this evidence to light in its entirety.

The text of the documents appear on Wired here; bravo to Wired for taking a stand on what could be one of the most important cases protecting our digital rights to date.

Deanna Zandt is a contributing editor at AlterNet.