Fergie's Tech Blog

Stumbling Into a Spy Scandal

Ryan Singel writes on Wired News:

When former AT&T technician Mark Klein learned of a secret room installed in the company's San Francisco internet switching center, he was certain he had stumbled onto the Total Information Awareness program, a Defense Department research project that intended to scour databases across the country for telltale signs of terrorists.

Though the program had mostly been terminated by Congress in September 2003, portions of the program were allowed to continue.

Klein believed he had found these remnants, according to a written statement by Klein acquired by Wired News. AT&T built the secret room in 2003 and wired it up to receive a copy of the internet traffic running through its fiber-optic network, according to Klein's statement and accompanying documents. Inside the room, AT&T had installed routers, Sun Microsystems servers and traffic-analysis software from a company called Narus.

posted by Fergie @ 5/17/2006 06:39:00 AM