WIRED NEWS shook the blogosphere (though not the mainstream media) this week by publishing documents that appear to support accusations by a former AT&T employee that the company has helped the government monitor huge amounts of private Internet traffic (wired.com).
Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, had earlier submitted the documents as part of a lawsuit against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The United States District Court judge in the case had ordered the documents sealed while he considered contentions by the government and by AT&T that making them public could compromise national security.
Wired News decided to publish them because "we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy," wrote Evan Hansen, the site's editor. Ryan Singel, a reporter, obtained the documents from "an anonymous source close to the litigation," he added.
The documents are highly technical, detailing the methodology behind the AT&T program. But they also describe how the company set up a "secret room" for the operation in a San Francisco switching center. In an introductory note for the documents, Mr. Klein wrote he was "presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project."
The information has been described in previous media accounts, but releasing all 30 pages, along with some photos of the secret room, allows people to assess Mr. Klein's assertions for themselves.
And so they are. The denizens of Slashdot, a site dominated by network managers and programmers, have for the most part decided that Mr. Klein's accusations are true.
There is some disagreement, though, as to what it means. For instance, while Slashdotters are largely appalled at the notion of the National Security Agency's reading their e-mail messages, one anonymous poster called them "hypocrites" and pointed out that their own network policies were often similar. "It's everywhere; what's bothersome is knowing you are being monitored. If you are doing something illegal/immoral/nasty/dumb/stupid maybe the N.S.A.'s monitoring system will make you think twice about doing it."
Contested Space Hollywood WireTap, a gossip site, revealed this week that several famous pornography stars are promoting themselves on MySpace, a community site that's popular among people of all ages ? but especially teenagers.
As a result, Hollywood WireTap reported, Weight Watchers has withdrawn its advertisements and T-Mobile is talking to MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, about the situation. Both companies told the site that their contracts with MySpace, which takes in a reported $156 million in annual ad revenue, are intended to prevent their ads from appearing on pages that promote pornographic material.
The pages of sex-film stars like Jenna Jameson and Tera Patrick show they have thousands of "friends" ? other MySpace users who ask for full access to a user's page. Those pages, in turn, link to the stars' own homepages, which are often replete with pornographic images.
Their MySpace pages are "popular with the kids who are MySpace's mainstay," according to Hollywood WireTap. Some of the stars' "friends" are as young as 14. "Obviously parents, already concerned about the site's alleged pedophiles, won't be happy with this newest twist," the gossip site concludes.
The Wrong Guy In retrospect, it seems inevitable that Guy Goma ? the man accidentally interviewed by the BBC last week in a case of mistaken identity ? would become an Internet celebrity. The BBC hauled Mr. Goma onto its soundstage and started asking him about downloading music. He had no idea what was going on, but he answered well enough. The interviewer thought he was Guy Kewney, a technology journalist, but he was just a guy who was there looking for a job.
The video has been passed around the Internet, and is featured on a new site, guygoma.com, dedicated to the incident and to Mr. Goma's job search. DAN MITCHELL
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