Is his book "Wiring Up The Big Brother Machine...And Fighting It" worth a read?
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
#42NSA and AT&T (telecom in general?) caught with their pants down not just once, but twice.
All of this heavily publicized yet here we are today with privacy being an afterthought in everyone’s mind.
I hate to say it but the private corporations and state have really made most of the population complacent with wide net surveillance — cameras everywhere, privacy non-existent, “kyc”, “selfies”, social media, big tech creating profiles of users, and data brokerages selling and buying “anonymized” profiles.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#43Earlier 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.
I also have an older home and we had to repair our sewer line. It was clay pipe which had broken in a few spots and had major root intrusion. Thankfully there's some newer technology that makes it significantly cheaper in the right circumstances -- instead of digging up your street connection and laying in new pipe they can blow an epoxy-soaked liner into your existing pipe, then run a curing light through it. It ended up being less than 40% of the cost of replacement and works just as well.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sewe…
If we are going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, i assume spies can purchase real sewer vans with the logo of real sewer companies on it.
I agree though that it seems more plausible to just be a real sewer van.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I do not want my data included in the dataset. "We're not looking at it, pinky swear!" rings hollow.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#46Nooooooo! 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
This is crazy.. you guys are focused on vans and mini stories when all his sacrifice and that of thousand if not more americans was snuffed.
`Congress intervened by passing the FISA Amendments Act which, in part, granted “retroactive immunity” to the telecommunications carriers for their involvement in the NSA spying programs. This massive grant of immunity for past violations of multiple state and federal laws protecting communications privacy was unprecedented.`
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think we all know that. We, or I at least, don't agree with it.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sewe…
If we are going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, i assume spies can purchase real sewer vans with the logo of real sewer companies on it. I agree though that it seems more plausible to just be a real sewer van.
I think if they're buying a fake sewer inspection van they're probably smart enough to find one that doesn't look to people on the Internet like it's a prop out of the movie Enemy of the State.
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to believe it was an inspection van: https://nationalplant.com/services/digital-tv-inspection/ I'd like to believe that, but I don't.
That very well could be what it was. If it had been anything other than: 1. Spotless. 2. Parked right behind Klein's (and by extension, my) house. 3. Skittish, such that they closed the door right after I took the picture and drove off less than a minute later without pulling any gear up out of a manhole or something. then that's probably what I'd chalk it up to. I am absolutely not 100% convinced it was, say, an und…
Somebody give the number on the van a call and post results
Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died
#50Age 79/80 ?