Before Snowden, Mark Klein tried to expose warrantless US surveillance

Before there was Edward Snowden and the leak of explosive documents showing widespread government surveillance, there was Mark Klein – a telecommunications technician who alleged that AT&T was allowing US spies to siphon vast amounts of customer data without warrants.

Klein’s allegations and the news reports about them launched dozens of consumer lawsuits in early 2006 against the government and telecommunications companies. The lawsuits alleged invasion of privacy and targeted the very same provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are at the centre of the latest public outcry.

That was seven years ago, and the warrantless collection continues, perhaps on an even greater scale, underscoring just how difficult it will be for the recently outraged in pursuing any new lawsuits, like the one the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the government on Tuesday in New York federal court.

“I warned whoever I could,” Klein said in telephone interview from his home in Alameda, a city across the bay from San Francisco. “I was angry then. I’m angrier now.”

All the lawsuits prompted by Klein’s disclosures were bundled up and shipped to a single San Francisco federal judge to handle. Nearly all the cases were tossed out when Congress in 2008 granted the telecommunications retroactive immunity from legal challenges, a law the US Supreme Court upheld. Congress’ action will make it difficult to sue the companies caught up in the latest disclosures.

The only lawsuit left from that bundle is one aimed directly at the government. And that case has been tied up in litigation over the US Justice Department’s insistence that airing the case in court would jeopardise national security.

“The United States government under both administrations has been stonewalling us in court,” said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the consumers who filed that lawsuit. EFF has also filed a related lawsuit seeking the Justice Department’s legal interpretation of the law that the government is apparently relying on to collect consumers’ electronic data without a warrant.