Late 2003: AT&T Technician Learns of Secret NSA-Connected ‘Study Groups’, More Details about NSA Spying on Citizens’ Telecommunications

Senior AT&T technician Mark Klein (see July 7, 2009), working at the company’s Folsom Street facility in San Francisco one floor above the National Security Agency’s “secret room” monitoring the company’s Internet communications (see October 2003 and Fall 2003), is given a technical document to pass on to the secret room’s AT&T supervisor, a man Klein will identify only as “Ski” (see Summer 2002 and January 2003). Klein flips through the non-classified document, titled “Study Group 3 LGX/Splitter Wiring San Francisco Issue 1 12/10/02.” (LGX, Klein will later explain, refers to “Lucent LightGuide patch panels.”) He finds the document astonishing. It confirms, he will later write, “that the splitter cabinet in the 7th floor Internet room [his workstation] was directly connected to panels in the 6th floor secret room, which was referred to as the ‘SG3 Secure Room.’” Documents he has previously read (see Fall 2003) “made repeated references to the ‘Splitter,’ ‘Splitter Cabinet,’ or other descriptions which made it clear that the three documents were linked together.” Klein deduces that “SG3” stands for “Study Group 3,” an appellation he will write was chosen in “an apparent attempt to make a sinister operation look innocent.” And, since San Francisco is the site of the third study group, he deduces there must be at least two other study groups, presumably in different cities, “a fact,” he will write, “which was soon confirmed to me. I had a hand on only one small part of a giant octopus.” Klein pores more closely over the documents to try to learn exactly what AT&T and the NSA are doing, and soon finds a reference to a “Narus STA 6400.” He has no idea what this piece of equipment is, but he quickly learns that it is, as he will write, “a very sophisticated and specialized product that not only was perfectly suited for sorting through the data stream in real time looking for things, but… was already being marketed specifically to telecommunications and other companies for intelligence and police spying.” [AT&T, 12/10/2002; AT&T, 1/13/2003; AT&T, 1/24/2003; Klein, 2009, pp. 35-37] Later, Klein will describe the Narus STA 6400 as “not only designed for high-speed sifting through high-speed volumes of data, looking for something according to various program algorithms, something you’d think would be perfect for a spy agency.” [PBS Frontline, 5/15/2007]