Web Site Says Papers May Be From Lawsuit Filed Against AT& T

Case Alleges Role in Government Monitoring

A technology news Web site yesterday published documents that it said appear to have been filed under seal in a lawsuit accusing AT&T Inc. of taking part in a secret government program to track Americans' phone and Internet communications.

The site, Wired.com, said the documents included a statement by former AT&T technician Mark Klein claiming that the telecommunications company built a "secret room" at one of its buildings in San Francisco that he believes housed equipment that allowed the federal government to monitor Internet traffic flowing on its network.

The documents Wired posted online also include eight pages of technical drawings and tables, most of which are marked "AT&T Proprietary," that Klein said describe how to "spy on fiber-optic circuits."

The documents' authenticity could not be immediately verified.

Dale Hatfield, a former chief technologist at the Federal Communications Commission, said that, based on a quick review, the documents posted on the Wired site appeared to be authentic and to describe a way to monitor traffic on a high-speed fiber-optic circuit.

A class-action lawsuit filed earlier this year by the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation and others claims that AT&T took part "in a secret and illegal government program to intercept and analyze vast quantities of Americans' telephone and Internet communications, surveillance done without the authorization of a court."

In its court filings, AT&T has argued, without confirming or denying it carried out any of the activities alleged, that Congress and the courts have given blanket immunity to telephone companies "who respond to apparently lawful requests for national security assistance" from the government. The company has argued the lawsuit should be immediately dismissed.

The judge in the case last week refused AT&T's request that certain documents filed under seal in the case be returned to the company, and he ordered the plaintiffs and their lawyers not to disclose those documents to anyone.

Evan Hansen, editor of Wired News, would not disclose where it received the documents but said they came from "an anonymous source close to the litigation."

"We believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy," Wired wrote in a story that accompanied the documents it published. "The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents."

AT&T, the EFF and the law firm representing Klein, the former AT&T technician, all declined to comment when asked if they could verify the authenticity of the documents.