AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is a Cover-Up [VIDEO]

Posted by Paddy , Brave New Films at 12:00 PM on November 8, 2007.

This post, written by Paddy, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Brave New Films Blog

"They're tapping into the entire Internet."

Via TPM since I'm ailing....

Earlier today we flagged that Mark Klein, who uncovered a secret surveillance room run by the NSA while employed as a San Francisco-based technician for AT&T, is in Washington to lobby against granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies. In an interview this afternoon, Klein explained why he traveled all the way from San Francisco to lobby Senators about the issue: if the immunity provision passes, Americans may never know how extensive the surveillance program was -- or how deeply their privacy may have been invaded.

"The president has not presented this truthfully," said Klein, a 62-year old retiree. "He said it was about a few people making calls to the Mideast. But I know this physical equipment. It copies everything. There's no selection of anything, at all -- the splitter copies entire data streams from the internet, phone conversations, e-mail, web-browsing. Everything."

Watch the video, courtesy of Senator Chris Dodd

Tagged as: domestic spying, warrantless wiretapping, dodd, bush administration, at@t, telecommunications

Paddy is a regular contributor to Cliff Schecter.com.