DANGER: POLITICAL CONTENT

I understand this may upset a few folks. I'm not much into politics. I work for a telecom company. I hate seeing our Constitutional rights raided and eroded under the fear-driven "War on Terror". While it can be said there hasn't been another attack on American soil since 9/11, it has yet to be proven that any information obtained by agencies through illegal means prevented it.

I was appalled when I read the statements and engineering documents made public by Mark Klein, now a former AT&T employee. Klein detailed a secret room at an AT&T Central Office (CO) in California where data was being passed wholesale to the NSA. All major backbone Internet links were passed through fiber-optic splitters, with one lead headed straight for Uncle Sam.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6//att_klein_wired.pdf

This revelation caused some public outcry, and a few lawsuits.

This week, the US Senate passed a new FISA bill which granted telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) retroactive immunity for handing over information to the government without a court order. This bill also expands the government's ability to spy on its own citizens with no judicial oversight whatsoever.

There is currently a FISA bill in the US House which does not grant telco immunity, which President Bush says he will veto.


Folks, I encourage you to contact your Representative in Congress and urge them not to allow telco immunity. Wholesale violation of your 4th amendment rights should not be permitted. The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) has a website setup to assist you in generating e-mail to your Representative regarding this measure.

https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy...rAction&id=363


Oh, and by the way, those fancy spy satellites we have... they can now be used by law enforcement agencies against citizens if they obtain a warrant:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...ifwNgD8UP4GG03