Miles Ehrlich is no fan of Big Brother. Just a fewmonths after leaving government, the erstwhile chief of the SanFrancisco federal prosecutor’s white collar division - along with hispartner, Ismail Ramsey - has surfaced as the lawyer for a San Franciscoman who dropped what could be a big bomb in the ongoing governmentwiretapping scandal.
In a statement releasedThursday, their client, former AT&T technician Mark Klein, saysthat he witnessed the setup of a room in the phone company’s SanFrancisco office building that appeared to give the government accessto all AT&T telephone and Internet traffic - and not just theinternational calls that the government has admitted to eavesdroppingon.
“Based on my understanding of the connections andequipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting whatamounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing theInternet — whether that be peoples’ email, web surfing, or any otherdata,” Klein said.
In 2003, the National Security Agency set up asecret room inside the phone company’s San Francisco office buildingthat was not accessible to AT&T technicians, Klein said. There, aphone company worker hired by the NSA to handle the equipment set upequipment that apparently diverted communications to something called aSemantic Traffic Analyzer.
“The Narus STA technology is known to be usedparticularly by government intelligence agencies because of its abilityto sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammedtargets,” Klein said. “The company’s advertising boasts that itstechnology ‘captures comprehensive customer usage data … andtransforms it into actionable information. … [It] provides completevisibility for all Internet applications.’”
Stein says he learned that similar rooms were installed in Seattle, San Jose, L.A. and San Diego.
“Despite what we are hearing,and considering the public track record of this administration, Isimply do not believe their claims that the NSA’s spying program isreally limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistentwith the NSA’s charter or with [the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAct].”
Klein’s statement is being incorporated into a class action filed inSan Francisco federal court, in which lawyers with the ElectronicFrontier Foundation, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins,and Traber & Voorhees in Pasadena claim that AT&T illegallyallowed the NSA taps.