Dem Leadership "Basically Carrying Out A SECRET Agreement With WH"

[kpete]

AT&T Whistleblower Urges Against Immunity for Telecoms in Bush Spy Program
The Senate is expected to vote on a controversial measure to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act tomorrow. The legislation would rewrite the nation’s surveillance laws and authorize the National Security Agency’s secret program of warrantless wiretapping. We speak with Mark Klein, a technician with AT&T for over twenty-two years. In 2006 Klein leaked internal AT&T documents that revealed the company had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the National Security Agency access to its fiber optic internet cables.

.....................

(tiny snippet)
audio and transcript available at:
http://i4.democracynow.org/2008/7/7/att_t_whistleblower_urges_against_immunity

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Russ Feingold. Mark Klein, your response?


MARK KLEIN: Yeah, Senator Feingold and Senator Dodd have been waging a valiant last-ditch effort to stop this thing. The problem they face is that their own party leadership is against them. This latest bill was rammed through the House by Speaker Pelosi, who had said earlier that she was against immunity, but then she suddenly turned and rammed this through.


And the same thing is happening now in the Senate. And Senator Obama, who a few months ago, before he was the nominee, explicitly said he would not vote for any bill that had immunity in it, and now, a few days ago, he’s reversed his position and said he will vote for this bill.


So the Democratic leadership is overriding the fights that Feingold and Dodd are trying to wage, and they’re basically carrying out a secret agreement with the White House. Remember, there were never any open hearings on this. They met in secret with the telephone lobbyists and with intelligence agency officials. It was all a secret deal, a conspiracy against the American people. They never had hearings. I was never invited to any hearings. And they’re going to ram this through.

................

MARK KLEIN: Well, I assume the case will just get dismissed, and it’ll never happen. I’ll never get called. There will never be any hearings. It will die, and you’ll never find out what they did. And that was the point of having this lawsuit. It wasn’t about getting money out of the companies. I wouldn’t get anything, by the way; I’m just a witness, I’m not a party to this lawsuit. And it was about finding out what happened. And that’s why they want to kill the lawsuit.


much more at:
http://i4.democracynow.org/2008/7/7/att_t_whistleblower_urges_against_immunity

[groovedaddy]

1. What's the justification for this? It's just flat out WRONG! n.t

[L. Coyote]

4. ALL COMMUNICATIONS routed overseas to circumvent US law and the Constitution

Deja DU: Are ALL COMMUNICATIONS routed overseas to circumvent US law and the Constitution?
Nov-09-07 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2245762

I was told years ago that ALL fiber optic communication traffic was routed overseas so that "everything" was moved outside the protections of the law and Constitution and ANYTHING could be monitored. I thought the idea quite fantastic even though it came from a very reliable source that would know exactly such things. Then, the story of the fiber optic splitters hit my radar. I now see now how easily exactly that, routing ALL COMMUNICATIONS overseas, was accomplished.

Is that Bush's and the Telecom's HUGE crime hidden and covered-up behind this story?

If the telecoms get immunity, will it aid in covering up Bush's crime.
ABSOLUTELY! That is why it is so important to the Rs! Support = obstruction of justice.

Have we arrived at the point in the history of the Bushco junta where
laws passed and people nominated are part of crimes of obstructing justice?

===================
AT&T Whistleblower: Telecom Immunity Is A Cover-Up
By Spencer Ackerman - Nov 7, 2007
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004662.php


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."

What Klein unearthed -- you can read it here -- points to a nearly unbounded surveillance program. Its very location in San Francisco suggests that the program was "massively domestic" in its focus, he said. "If they really meant what they say about only wanting international stuff, you wouldn't want it in San Francisco or Atlanta. You'd want to be closer to the border where the lines come in from the ocean so you pick up international calls. You only do it in San Francisco if you want domestic stuff. The location of this stuff contradicts their story .....

=======================
NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee

NSA Monitors All Web Traffic, Says Ex-AT&T Employee
Tom Corelis (Blog) - Nov 10, 2007
http://www.dailytech.com/NSA+Monitors+All+Web+Traffic+Says+ExATT+Employee/article9620.htm


Felt "forced to the connect the Big Brother Machine" if he wanted to keep his job

Mark Klein, the former AT&T technician and whistleblower who helped kick off the AT&T/NSA eavesdropping scandal, clarified further details regarding what he witnessed while connecting a secret NSA eavesdropping facility: secure room 641A in AT&T’s San Francisco switching center, presumably commissioned by the NSA, received copies of all the traffic its splitters were connected to, including both international and domestic e-mails, web traffic, and phone calls, both from AT&T’s customers as well as other providers.

Previous statements by the government, AT&T and President Bush indicated that the only affected communications are communications relevant to national security, like those of suspected terrorists and suspicious foreign nationals. According to Klein, however, the technology used to connect the secure room was far more democratic, consisting of simple, dumb splitters incapable of any kind of contextual filtering: essentially, room 641A received “a duplicate of every fiber-optic signal routed through facilities.”

Klein, appearing on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann show, told viewers about his personal association with secure room 641A. “When I was a technician, I had the engineering/wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room … I had to know in order to do my job,” he said, “so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied; the entire datastream was copied into the secret room.”

Referring to the equipment itself, Klein states, “the splitter device has no selective capability, it just copies everything. .............

=======================
Interview: AT&T Whistleblower Mark Klein on Bush's Illegal Surveillance and Retroactive Immunity
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0dJJhLueEg

=======================
NSA Pressured LA Times To Kill Domestic Spying Story
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOI1VGKcgGY

=======================
November 5th, 2007
AT&T Whistleblower to Urge Senate to Reject Blanket Immunity for Telecoms
Press Conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, November 7
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/05

Washington, D.C. - On Wednesday, November 7, at 10:30am, telecommunications technician and AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein will speak out at a press conference on Capitol Hill, explaining why he is asking lawmakers to reject immunity for telecoms who assisted the Bush administration's spying on millions of Americans.

Klein witnessed first-hand the technology AT&T built to assist the government's domestic warrantless wiretapping program at AT&T's main switching facility in San Francisco. As part of his job at AT&T, Klein connected high-speed fiber optic cables to sophisticated equipment that intercepted communications from AT&T customers and then copied and routed every single one to a room controlled by the National Security Agency (NSA). Klein has provided evidence for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF's) class-action lawsuit against AT&T for its role in the illegal spying.

"My job required me to enable the physical connections between AT&T customers' Internet communications and the NSA's illegal, wholesale copying machine for domestic emails, Internet phone conversations, web surfing and all other Internet traffic. I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the National Security Agency to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history," said Klein.

Also speaking at the event Wednesday ...........

=======================
Judge Orders Telecommunications Companies to Preserve Evidence in Government Surveillance Cases
Ruling Advances EFF's Class-action Lawsuit Against AT&T
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2007/11/06


San Francisco - A federal judge today ruled on a preservation motion filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), ordering that telecommunications companies must preserve any evidence of collaborating with the government in illegal spying on ordinary Americans.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ordered the telecommunications companies to halt any routine destruction of documents or to arrange for the preservation of accurate copies. On December 14, each party must provide the court with confirmation that the court's order has been carried out. The court order did not require the government or the carriers to reveal whether or not they had any relevant evidence.

The government and the carriers had opposed the preservation motion, claiming that the government's invocation of the state secrets privilege made it impossible to proceed with a preservation order. In litigation, parties are typically required to preserve all relevant evidence.

For the judge's order:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/att/393%20order.pdf

For more on the class-action lawsuit against AT&T:
http://www.eff.org/cases/att

===== MORE ======
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2245762

[kpete]

5. Thank you

again...
you add SO much to my post!

peace, kp

[dmosh42]

7. This why I donate to MoveOn rather than Dem party! n/t

[roguevalley]

18. My take: leadership gets briefed on EVERYTHING in secret with

the threat of jail if they disclose this 'national security' shit. Since they knew about it and did nothing, they are criminally liable too. Fuck Nancy Pelosi and her ilk to hell.

[leveymg]

25. They get briefings on CIA programs, and some DIA/DoD black ops. Gang of 8 immune from prosecution

as lawmakers for revealing secrets. However, they can effectively lose their security clearances, and that would require a member's replacement on the Intel or Armed Service's Committee, or as Speaker/Majority/Minority Leader.

Anyway, Congress Members rarely, if ever, reveal the details about classified programs which they've been "read into". That goes for torture, warrantless spying, and quite possibly the compartmentalized/top secret CIA/DIA programs that were running Islamic terrorists into the U.S. before 9/11. This is apparently still going on according to Sy Hersh, who revealed that some of the Iranian opposition groups have been receiving training in Nevada in recent years.

[msongs]

2. sad but true your party and their party are kinda the same in too many ways nt

[electropop]

17. The two major parties have merged. It's time for a real opposition party.

I don't know how they did it, whether by threats of Anthrax, or the seduction of wealth and power, but the GOP has acquired the Democratic Party. We're in for even worse times. I'm scouting real estate in Canada.

[fascisthunter]

3. Now I Know Both Parties Wanted This Shit

at least the so-called Dem establishment, with the exception of a handful of good ones trying to do the right thing.

[groovedaddy]

9. I suspect they've already used this "power" against the Dems and have them by the balls

Look at what they did to with the U.S. attorneys and DOJ - used them for blatant political purposes.
Is there anyone who doesn't think they did the same with eavesdropping on calls?

[fascisthunter]

10. either way, they failed

that's if your theory even were true. Could it be? We'll never know since they won't do anything about this mess.

[groovedaddy]

14. Listening to Compromise - op ed in ny times today

TWO years ago, I stated my belief that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and disregard for domestic and international law poses a direct challenge to our constitutional order, and “constitutes a far greater threat than the lawlessness of Richard Nixon.”

That was not a casual comparison. When I was on the staff of the National Security Council, my home phone was tapped by the Nixon administration — without a warrant — beginning in 1969. The wiretap stayed on for 21 months. The reason? My boss, Henry Kissinger, and the director of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover, believed that I might have leaked information to this newspaper. Even after I left government, and went to work on Edmund Muskie’s presidential campaign, the F.B.I. continued to listen in and made periodic reports to the president.

I was No. 8 on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list” — a strange assemblage of 20 people who had incurred the White House’s wrath because they had disagreed with administration policy. As the presidential counsel John Dean explained it in 1971, the list was part of a plan to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” My guess is that I earned this dubious distinction because of my opposition to the Vietnam War, though no one ever said for sure.

Because I rejected the Nixon administration’s use of national security as a pretext for broad assertions of unchecked executive power, I became engaged with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when it was proposed in the early 1970s. And because I reject the Bush administration’s equally extreme assertions of executive power at the expense of civil liberties, I have been engaged in trying to improve the current legislation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08halperin.html?th&emc=th

[DailyGrind51]

6. Hey, don't think for one second that the Democrats would deny

something that they would like for themselves! They let Bush set the precedent for power so that he will take the initial heat, but then, it will be in place and ready when they retake the White House!

[snappyturtle]

8. I'm afraid you're right.

sad

[tblue37]

16. One reason why I couldn't believe the Republicans would allow such

things is that I couldn't believe they would want such unchecked power in the hands of a Democratic administration. But then I realized that they have always assumed that with all their election theft infrastructure in place (i.e., THE math), there would never be a risk of losing that power. Unfortunately, I won't believe they are wrong about that part until facts on the ground have proven them wrong about it.

[biglake]

11. This explains PELOSI- San Francisco wiring- she must be over her head

[peacetalksforall]

12. I feel desolate. I feel like I'm slipping away. I am embarassed to

place all my hope in Democrats. What pleasure can you take for them doing something right on something trivial when they do something so disastrous on one of the biggest Constitutional changes of our life. The Dems have not caved to Bush, they have caved to the barons, their foundations, the corporations and agendas they own, their secret societies, and the stockholders of those corporations.

Dick and George are their tools, now the DLC and the Dems are. Someone please explain any scenario that makes them heroes.

Yes, I'm slipping away - there are only a handful of leaders. And we don't know where our nominee is.

The carpet is massive because what they want to sweep under the carpet is massive. And the carpet is already covering up filth.

[Individualist]

13. The not so secret secret...

"The Democratic Leadership Council's agenda is indistinguishable from the Republican Neoconservative agenda," Dennis Kucinich

[sellitman]

23. Dennis is one of the few left worth supporting.

This makes me so mad that I cannot post here the thoughts going through my mind.

I'd be TS'd immediately.

[AzDar]

15. Kick...

(so fucking disgusted)

:kick:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. They vote. I note. I vote.

[bvar22]

20. Watching, and taking names.

:patriot:

The very first thing the Democratic House Leadership did when they regained the Majority in 2006:

*Negotiated a SECRET FREE TRADE deal directly with Bush without input from LABOR, Environment, or the Democratic Caucus.
When Charles Rangel was asked why the Dem Leadership kept this new Free Trade Deal secret from LABOR, Environment, and the Dem Caucus, Rangel replied that those people just get in the way.



"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[biglake]

21. very revealing on Rangel and our leaders

ick

[snot]

22. Rachel Maddow rptg Obama SUPPORTS immunity now -- WHY????

[blindpig]

24. Bizness as usual.

There is only one party, the Money party.