The CEO and the chief counsel for Yahoo got ripped up and down by members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee because Yahoo had handed over to the Chinese government the name of a pro-democracy dissident named Shi Tao. [...]

Boy-o-boy, you should've seen those Congressmen, Democrats and Republicans, lining up to damn Yahoo for what it did. These, of course, are the same slithering weasels who vote for one Patriot Act after another, creating a matrix of virtually irrevocable license for the United States government, under the sham of "national security" needs, to shake those same Internet providers down anytime it wants for information about anyone, and the companies aren't allowed to even so much as say a word to the targets of the spying.

~Quoth the Dark Wraith

His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts.

Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He carried no security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.

"If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — well, they should suffer the consequences," Klein said.

The NSA and the White House also declined to comment.

Klein is urging Congress not to block Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action suit pending in federal court in San Francisco, and 37 other lawsuits charging carriers with illegally collaborating with the NSA program. He and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed Hepting v. AT&T in 2006, are urging key lawmakers to oppose a pending White House-endorsed immunity provision that effectively would wipe out the lawsuits. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the measure today.

Re: AT&T Whistleblower -- 11-07-07 Video from Countdown:

Keith Olberman interview with Mark Klein. (After short ad.)

Thanks for the follow up, MB. I remember when this first broke, and Klein's description of the very complex system of Entry/Egress from the room containing the NSA relays patched into the AT&T main trunk. That story fell like a lead sinker, since you wouldn't have seen any mention of it from our ever-instructive MSM, and the outrages were just starting to build up at the time, so this became merely one more fish to eventually fry. Of course now, the Telecoms have paid off enough congressional henchmen to threaten to take the frying pan AND the stove, out of the equation.

In another installment of "Does this guy ever stop with the threadjackin'?": I have discovered the absolute bliss of Speed Dial in the Opera browser. How pathetic, to take such pleasure from so menial a development. (I'm a pretty cheap date, too!)

Good aftermoon, all and Sundry.

In this segment of "This crap's startin' ta add up", the ever Right-ward Steny Hoyer has announced that he's glad we went into Iraq, thus his Yea vote in 2002. Hoyer stated that he supported the resolution in 2002 because he believed it would bring Saddam to the negotiating table, and because millions of people had been murdered in Africa because United Nations resolutions had not been enforced. If you close yer peepers and listen while Hoyveyer gives the verbal fascist salute, "he would not have voted for it if he had known "how incompetently it would be executed", why, it sounds just like any Republican in his vicinity! Ventriloquism? Ah-hah! Whew, that's a relief. :(

trog69, 11/08/07 at 07:40:42

You're welcome. ( ? )
___

My sincere apologies for killing the thread by commenting relative to your previous side bar item, Wraith. :-(

The only thing you killed, Bloody Shoes, was the few brain cells left to the unenlightened, with your electrifying and penetrating delving into this sad state of affairs concerning our acceptance of privacy intrusions by our employees.

I warn't bein' facetious up 'ere, Ma'am. I'm glad you pointed this out!

Sometimes it seems like this place just...Freezes up. Weird. Mebbe it's the higher plane of conversation here! Ya reckon?

Is there a Uruguayan in the house? I need someone to tell me why it would be a bad idea to retire there.

Good evening, trog.

Most people don't want to retire to a country that sounds like a reproductive disorder.

The Dark Wraith doesn't, anyway.

That's surprising coming from someone so up on all things computer. I would assume Montevideo would sound like a great place to live. It sure is beautiful!