AT&T "Splitter Cabinet" Lets Bush Spy on Everyone

Whenever we hear discussions about FISA and the President’s illegal wiretapping program, the situation is almost always presented as the President wiretapping people without first getting a warrant. This is true, but it doesn’t illustrate the true extent of this program. It makes it seem as though the President is picking out suspicious people, one by one, and then ordering a wiretap.

The reality of what is going on is much more sinister, and if us peasants were told by the media just how many people are being spied on, I have no doubt that we would all be enraged. The truth of the matter is that by using the resources of the few telecommunications companies who were willing to break the law, the Bush Administration has been copying the emails, internet searches, and phone calls of everybody. Here’s how we know.

On March 28, 2006, a retired AT&T service technician named Mark Klein gave testimony during which he supplied proof that the NSA, with the cooperation of AT&T, set up a “splitter cabinet” in a locked room in San Francicso which copies all the information that passes through AT&T’s WorldNet Internet room. At the San Francisco location, the NSA’s locked room is called the SG3 Secure Room. According to Mark Klein’s sworn testimony,

The regular AT&T technician workforce was not allowed in the SG3 Secure Room. To my knowledge, only employees cleared by the NSA were permitted to enter the SG3 Secure Room. To gain entry to the SG3 Secure Room required both a physical key for the cylinder lock and a combination code number to be entered into an electronic keypad on the door. To my knowledge, only FSS #2, and later FSS #3, had both the key and the combination code… On one occasion, when FSS #3 was retrieving a circuit card for me from the SG3 Secure Room, he invited me into the room with him for a couple minutes while he retrieved the circuit card from a storage cabinet…

The WorldNet Internet room included large routers, racks of modems for AT&T customers’ WorldNet dial-in services, and other telecommunications equipment. The equipment in the WorldNet Internet room was used to direct emails, web browsing requests and other electronic communications sent to or from the customers of AT&T’s WorldNet Internet service….

A fiber optic circuit can be split using splitting equipment to divide the light signal and to divert a portion of the signal into each of two fiber optic cables. While both signals will have a reduced signal strength, after the split both signals still contain the same information, effectively duplicating the communications that pass through the splitter.

In the course of my employment, I reviewed two “Cut-In and Test Procedure” documents dated January 13, 2003 and January 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on how to connect the already in-service circuits to a “splitter cabinet”, which diverted light signals from the WorldNet Internet service’s fiber optical circuits to the SG3 Secure Room…”

The circuits that were listed in the “Cut-in and Test Procedure” document dated January 24, 2003 are “Peering Links” that connect the WorldNet Internet network to national and international Internet networks of non-AT&T telecommunications companies…

Starting in February 2003, the “splitter cabinet” split (and diverted to the SG3 Secure Room) the light signals that contained the communications in transit to and from AT&T’s Peering Links with the following Internet networks and Internet exchange points: ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, Abovenet. Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet, and MAE-WEST.

MAE-WEST is an Internet nodal point and one of the largest “Internet exchange points” in the United States. PAIX, the Palo Alto Internet Exchange, is another significant Internet exchange point.

Internet exchange points are facilities at which large numbers of major Internet service providers interconnect their equipment in order to facilitate the exchange of communications among their respective networks.

Through the “splitter cabinet,” the content of all the electronic voice and data communications going across the Peering Links [listed above] was transferred from the WorldNet Internet room’s fiber optical circuits into the SG3 Secure Room…

In the course of my employment, I was required to connect new circuits to the “splitter cabinet” and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with another AT&T technician, I learned that other such “splitter cabinets” were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

Read the full transcript here.

Now, I’m not currently doing anything illegal (although writing this blog may soon fall into the illegal category), so if the government wants to listen to me argue with my mother on the phone, have at it. I don’t care.

But remember, these rooms are copying the information of everybody. Doesn’t that include Congressmen and Senators? We know for a fact that there is a splitter cabinet copying all the information that is exchanged in San Francisco. Doesn’t that mean that the emails and phone calls from “Democratic” Senator Diane Feinstein and Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer’s San Francisco offices have been copied and sent to the Bush Administration? The office of the current Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is located only 1.42 miles away from the splitter cabinet. Isn’t it likely that the Bush Administration now has access to the Speaker’s private phone calls and emails?

How about all the Congressmen and Senators with offices anywhere near Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego? How about all the Congressmen and Senators that have had emails and phone calls ever pass through some of the “largest internet exchange points in the United States?”

Ever wonder how the Bush Administration always seems one step ahead of the Democrats?

The Bush Administration has promised to veto any FISA bill that does not include immunity for the telecom companies, such as AT&T, that have broken the law to help the Bush Administration accomplish whatever it is that they are trying to accomplish. The case in which Mark Klein gave this testimony is called Hepting v. AT&T. If the Bush Administration wants to prevent any more whistleblowers from coming forward, preventing cases like Hepting v. AT&T from ever happening is a brilliant way to start.