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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

#71

Post by kstrauser »

anonym29 wrote: post #56
kstrauser wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to cong…

You won't get any argument from me. I agree. And even in agreement, I still say that there's a much larger grey area in Snowden's case. We can and should discuss whether his actions were justified. I think they are. But I can at least appreciate that people who disagree have legitimate reasons to see it otherwise.

Klein's case didn't come with all that other baggage.

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

#72

Post by tharkun__ »

tptacek wrote: post #48
bawolff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I hope the owner of the company doesn't read this. They probably like their designs! :)

I just went to Google maps to the address written on the van's passenger door and lo and behold, Google did drive down the alley behind and while this is a larger vehicle and not just a van, that's their look (they also have black versions if you look around): https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7851188,-118.211276,3a,67.3y...

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

#73

Post by adastra22 »

lukan wrote: post #20
nabakin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an actual undercover van before. Crazy picture. Do we know anything else about them?

I would not jump to conclusions so soon. A) I would question why they would do the effort of still doing surveillance on him B) if they do, they are usually so smart to keep the door closed C) like others have mentioned, sewer cleaning comes with a lot of tech (I assume remote controlled machines)

One thing for certain: that is absolutely NOT a sewer inspection van. Seriously, you ever worked trades? It is way too clean on the interior and not fitted for working dirty jobs, to say nothing of the visible surveillance workstation.

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

#75

Post by adastra22 »

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)

That’s just a display monitor and a small computer. Grandpaarent’s photo had two half racks of data center grade AV equipment.

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

#76

Post by [deleted] »

adastra22 wrote: post #73
lukan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not jump to conclusions so soon. A) I would question why they would do the effort of still doing surveillance on him B) if they do, they are usually so smart to keep the door closed C) like others have mentioned, sewer cleaning comes with a lot of tech (I assume remote controlled machines)

One thing for certain: that is absolutely NOT a sewer inspection van. Seriously, you ever worked trades? It is way too clean on the interior and not fitted for working dirty jobs, to say nothing of the visible surveillance workstation.

[deleted]

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

#77

Post by anonym29 »

kstrauser wrote: post #71
anonym29 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snowden also swore an oath to uphold the constitution, including the fourth amendment that the NSA was illegally violating (one NSA crime) and covering up (second NSA crime), including by lying to congress (third NSA crime), as well as to protect America from domestic enemies, like the kind of traitors who'd come up with a secret plan to violate the constitutional rights of the entire country and lie about it to cong…

You won't get any argument from me. I agree. And even in agreement, I still say that there's a much larger grey area in Snowden's case. We can and should discuss whether his actions were justified. I think they are. But I can at least appreciate that people who disagree have legitimate reasons to see it otherwise. Klein's case didn't come with all that other baggage.

No argument from me with what you wrote, either, I just wanted to make sure I was doing my interpretation justice by sharing it - there's certainly no shortage of posters parroting the other side's talking points.

It's interesting that Klein's tell-all didn't get as much attention despite being less legally fraught. It makes me wonder how much of the Snowden media frenzy was organic in the first place, and if not much, who was pulling the strings to draw attention to practices that our own government had an obvious interest in repressing and concealing discussion of.

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

#78

Post by londons_explore »

nabakin wrote: post #12
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

I don't think I've ever seen the inside of an actual undercover van before. Crazy picture. Do we know anything else about them?

I feel like a real undercover van would have a policy about not opening the side door during a mission too...

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

#79

Post by themcaffee »

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 certainly is just a Sewer TV inspection van! I have a hand in writing some of the software that is run on these and processes the videos that come out of them. They all have rack mounted PCs and a monitor with a joystick to control the crawler that goes in the pipe.

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

#80

Post by adastra22 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #63
psunavy03 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If Snowden was such a hero, why did he take Russian citizenship What choice did he have? Do you think he'd receive a fair trial if he came back to the US? and not oppose the invasion of Ukraine? Did he actively support it? I hadn't heard that. Major bummer, if so. Otherwise, he didn't oppose it for the same reason very few other Russians opposed it. I'm sure the reason will occur to you if you think hard enough.

He did not support the invasion of Ukraine. He just doesn’t comment on it. Which has somehow turned into an anti-Snowden talking point, despite the very obvious reasons why he doesn’t talk about it.
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