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Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

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Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#31

Post by kstrauser »

tptacek wrote: post #23
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.

It probably was! But given the batch of circumstances, I think it's at least plausible that it was more than that.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#32

Post by cookiengineer »

mikeyouse wrote: post #14
itisit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money shot! I did not realize sewer cleaning required so much onsite IT. Are those rack units running computational fluid dynamics models to figure out how to unclog elaborate networks of pipes?

Interestingly, it seems the 'real' sewer cleaning company uses a bunch of tech to do their inspections, etc.: https://specializedmaintenance.com/services/digital-tv-inspe... (Which would make it an excellent van for the 3-letter spooks to copy, so not really persuasive either way)

I wanted to point out that when visiting those sites from Germany (nationalplant.com and the specializedmaintenance.com website) it shows the same unavailable geoblocked message. I wouldn't have recognized it but after opening both links in new tabs on my phone I thought I forgot to open one of the links in this thread and I double-checked it.

Are those fake companies both hosted on wordfence or something? What are the odds, huh?

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#33

Post by marxisttemp »

kstrauser wrote: post #28
AtomBalm wrote: post #22

He revealed unlawful surveillance years prior to and of the same gravity as Snowden, but only one became a celebrity. I would love to know the reason for that.

I say this without intending to denigrate Snowden at all: Klein's situation was less messy. Snowden had a top secret clearance and vowed to safeguard all the secrets he came across. Klein was just a regular guy doing regular work for a regular company when he saw something strange. That doesn't mean I think Snowden was wrong, just that there's a ton of room for people to say "I agree with him but he shouldn't have do…

Likewise, Manning got pardoned when her release was clearly messier and less targeted than Snowden’s. There isn’t much logic to these things.

To be clear, all 3 are personal heroes of mine.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#34

Post by neil_s_anderson »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #26
neil_s_anderson wrote: post #18

I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed. I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk. You should all be sup…

The point is that mass domestic surveillance of American nationals violates common understanding of the law. It makes no sense for the requirements to get a wiretap to be so stringent but the requirements to monitor someone's internet traffic to be nonexistent, just because it's laundered through "intelligence gathering" and you argue it's therefore not "law enforcement."

The point of bulk data collection is to be able to, in effect, take a wiretap in the past before you knew what you'd need to be wiretapping in the present, by querying the bulk datasets for communications between specific endpoints within specific points in time.

As time travel doesn't exist, this is the next best technology available.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#35

Post by tptacek »

kstrauser wrote: post #31
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.

It probably was! But given the batch of circumstances, I think it's at least plausible that it was more than that.

I don't think it's very plausible. The subtext of the photo is "that looks comically unlike what you'd inspect from a sewer inspection van". Well, I can tell you pretty much for sure: thats' what the inside of a sewer inspection van from that company looks like.

It took just a couple minutes (less than 5) to go look this up and find the video, for what it's worth.

Maybe it's an NSA wet team! Wet, because they do sewer inspection work. :)

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#36

Post by jmpman »

I expect there were 10,000 who knew, and he’s the only one who spoke up. Now, the other 9,999 likely believed it was to thwart terrorism, as this was post 9/11. Maybe those who had visibility into who was being surveyed were checking to ensure the spying didn’t cross their ethical boundaries. Interesting to think of what each individual in the system was considering.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#37

Post by Bluecobra »

tptacek wrote: post #23
kstrauser wrote: post #5

Nooooooo! He was my next door neighbor a few years ago, and I knew him as a person before I realized that I knew him as a hero. His dogs were fiercely protective of his house, which is perfectly understandable. One day I saw a "sewer cleaning" van behind his house, and I have a hard time believing that's what it really was: https://honeypot.net/2025/03/12/rip-mark-klein.html

That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.

As an aside, if you are purchasing an older home make sure you pay for a sewer line inspection. I had no idea this was a thing until a few years later when I had to replace mine and it cost ~$25,000.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#38

Post by tehwebguy »

AtomBalm wrote: post #22

He revealed unlawful surveillance years prior to and of the same gravity as Snowden, but only one became a celebrity. I would love to know the reason for that.

Probably because one absconded half-successfully and became sort of stateless. That's a way more exciting story!

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#39

Post by tptacek »

Bluecobra wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's almost definitely just a sewer inspection van; I found videos that company has of "multi-sensor pipeline inspections" with the same van, open, with the same equipment visible, and a bunch of people following a bunch of equipment down into a manhole.

As an aside, if you are purchasing an older home make sure you pay for a sewer line inspection. I had no idea this was a thing until a few years later when I had to replace mine and it cost ~$25,000.

We had ours done when we moved in a couple years ago and it was a cool snakey camera thing; they only got us out to the service line; past that would have been a lot more elaborate. Also: that video feed? Pretty gross.

As an aside: I think a lot of people here would be surprised at the amount of technology (and surveillance) that goes into setting speed limits and placing stop signs in residential areas.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#40

Post by neil_s_anderson »

kstrauser wrote: post #29
neil_s_anderson wrote: post #18

I find it odd how many people automatically assume that whatever the NSA is up to must be undesirable and therefore should be opposed. I mean, where do you think analysis of plans by terrorists and nation state adversaries to attack our nation and its allies comes from? The raw intelligence data these are based on can only be gathered by surveillance of communications, both targeted and in bulk. You should all be sup…

Think of how safe we'd all be if we were on camera 24/7/365! Let me put it this way: I don't do anything illegal in my bathroom, but damned if I want someone watching me in there. Everyone has their line they don't want crossed. Klein's - and the EFF's, and mine - is somewhere past the NSA monitoring every single communication in the entire country without a warrant. I have no objection with them monitoring specific…

Just because your communications data or metadata exists in some bulk dataset somewhere doesn't mean that it's being actively and personally investigated by anyone.

As with the issuance of a warrant for wiretapping, there would need to be a proportionate and legitmate reason for your communications within a such a dataset to be looked at.

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