Maybe this has something to do with CNN's gushing over the IPhone!
Whistle-Blower Outs NSA Spy Room
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/04/70619AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.
Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
On Wednesday, the EFF asked the court to issue an injunction prohibiting AT&T from continuing the alleged wiretapping, and filed a number of documents under seal, including three AT&T documents that purportedly explain how the wiretapping system works.
According to a statement released by Klein's attorney, an NSA agent showed up at the San Francisco switching center in 2002 to interview a management-level technician for a special job. In January 2003, Klein observed a new room being built adjacent to the room housing AT&T's #4ESS switching equipment, which is responsible for routing long distance and international calls
AT&T 'Spy Room' Documents Unsealed;
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/06/spy_roomA civil liberties group suing telecom giant AT&T for allegedly installing illegal secret surveillance rooms in its internet facilities at the behest of the National Security Agency published substantial portions of long-sealed case documents Tuesday.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit, filed in January 2006, relies partly on documents provided to the group by Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who took three documents home with him when he retired in 2004. Those documents have been under seal in a San Francisco federal court. Wired News and other news organizations sought unsuccessfully to have them unsealed earlier this year.
However, this week AT&T acceded to the documents' partial disclosure after the EFF threatened to take the matter of their sealing to a federal appeals court. Portions of the sealed documents had been published by Wired News in May of 2006, and more recently by the PBS news program Frontline. AT&T agreed to the disclosure of those portions to escape the embarrassment of arguing that documents available on the internet for more than a year were secret, according to Cindy Cohn, the EFF's legal director.
AT&T declined to comment on the disclosure.
There are no surprises in the AT&T documentation published Tuesday, which consist of a subset of the pages already published by Wired News. They include AT&T wiring diagrams, equipment lists and task orders that appear to show the company tapping into fiber-optic cables at the point where its backbone network connects to other ISPs at a San Francisco switching office. The documents appear to show the company siphoning off the traffic to a room packed with internet-monitoring gear.
Released along with the AT&T documents is a formerly sealed signed declaration from Klein, and a written analysis of the documents penned by internet expert J. Scott Marcus, which have been kept mostly under wraps by a court order that applied to the parties in the case.
The interpretation of Klein's documents by Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the FCC, are the most interesting documents released Tuesday.
"This configuration appears to have the capability to enable surveillance and analysis of internet content on a massive scale, including both overseas and purely domestic traffic," Marcus wrote.
AT&T likely has 15 to 20 of these rooms around the country, and shipped data out of the rooms via a separate network to another location, Marcus concluded. Collectively, he estimated that the rooms were able to keep tabs on some 10 percent of the nation's purely domestic internet traffic
USA TODAY REVIEW: Apple's iPhone isn't perfect, but it's worthy of the hype
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/NEWS09/70627089/1001/NEWSBy Edward C. Baig
USA Today
The mania over Apple's iPhone launch has created stratospheric expectations that are near impossible to live up to. Yet with a few exceptions, this expensive, glitzy wunderkind is indeed worth lusting after.
That's saying a lot. After months of hype, Apple has delivered a prodigy — a slender fashion phone, a slick iPod and an Internet experience unlike any before it on a mobile handset.
Still, iPhone isn't perfect, or even the most ideal smartphone for every user. It's pricey. It lacks certain features found on some rival devices. AT&T's coverage was spotty in some areas I tested over the past two weeks. Your employer may prevent you from receiving corporate e-mail on the device.
For consumers who can afford one ($499 or $599, plus the cost of a two-year wireless plan with exclusive carrier AT&T), iPhone is by far the most chic cellphone I've seen. And there are terrific reasons — besides announcing to neighbors how cool you are — to try to nab the device when it finally goes on sale at Apple and AT&T stores at 6 p.m. local time Friday across the country
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070628/NEWS09/70627089/1001/NEWSTHE POLICE STATE MOVES FORWARD!
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