AT&T Whistleblower Exposes Secret Domestic Spying

The government is watching every email you send, every phone call you make, every website you surf - illegally.
PBS
Is this possible? Yes, according to Mark Klein - 22 year AT&T technician who has submitted key evidence in a class-action lawsuit by the civil liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T. It is alleged that AT&T helped the US government through the National Security Agency invade its customers' privacy. Klein reveals details of a secret room where equipment was installed in the facility at AT&T in San Francisco. Such devices allow the operators to record e-mails, web-surfing history and internet phone calls - every word we speak or type, and every website we look at. Klein says: "The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room."

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap ... a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed..." - GW Bush, April 20, 2004

Reminds me of this cartoon ... where the government keeps saying, "just trust us." How did we get to this point? What would persuade Americans to give up their civil rights to privacy? In a word - fear, instilled by our leadership. John Dean in his book, "Conservatives Without Conscience" details the authoritarian movement where conservatives willingly relinquish their rights of privacy to the authorities. Dean coins this new conservatism - Authoritarian Cultism described in this review by civil rights lawyer Glenn Greenwald:

"There is seemingly no limit -- literally -- on the willingness, even eagerness, of Bush supporters to defend and justify even the most morally repugnant abuses -- from constantly expanding spying on American citizens, to a President who claims and aggressively exercises the "right" to break the law... those who submit to authority necessarily relinquish their own conscience (in favor of serving the conscience of their leader and/or their movement), those who are part of this movement are capable of acts which a healthy and normal conscience ought to preclude. They can use torture, break laws, wage unnecessary wars based on false pretenses, and attempt to destroy the reputation of plainly patriotic and honest Americans..."

No wonder the American Bar Association's Presidential Taskforce has determined that Bush's actions "undermine the rule of law and our constitutional system of separation of powers."