AT&T Asks Judge To Order Documents Alleging Wiretaps Returned
AT&T asks judge to order documents alleging wiretaps returned
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercu...s/14319042.htm
By Elise Ackerman
4/11/2006
Attorneys for AT&T have asked a federal judge to order a San Francisco civil liberties group to return ``highly confidential'' documents that allegedly show that the telecommunications giant provided detailed records of millions of its customers to a government intelligence agency.
In documents filed on Monday, AT&T's attorneys also asked Judge Vaughn Walker to order the Electronic Frontier Foundation to refrain from referencing the documents in its lawsuit.
The EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T in January alleging that AT&T had collaborated with the National Security Agency in a ``massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.''
Last week, the group filed additional documents to the federal court in San Francisco totaling more than 140 pages. The documents purportedly provide evidence of the technology that AT&T had used to conduct surveillance for the NSA.
The documents, which included a sworn declaration from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein and confidential company documents, were voluntarily placed under seal by the group pending a decision by the judge to make them public.
However, Klein subsequently provided a statement to Wired News that described how he had met an agent from the National Security Agency in 2002. Klein said he was told the agent had come to interview a management-level technician ``for a special job.''
In January 2003, Klein said he learned the technician who had been interviewed by the government agent was installing equipment in a secret room that was built next to the room where the public's calls were routed.
Months later, Klein said he learned that signals were being diverted to the secret room, which contained a Narus STA 6400, a ``semantic traffic analyzer'' that could instantly sort through digital data, including e-mail, Internet phone calls, videos and digital pictures.
In Monday's filing, AT&T's attorneys asserted that Klein's statement to Wired News covered ``in a summary fashion the allegations set forth in the declaration he filed under seal.''
``We think this information should be public,'' said Cindy Cohn, the EFF's legal director. ``But we thought the appropriate thing to do was to present the issue to the judge and let the judge make the call.''
