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Room 641A
- RKearney 10y agoPrevious discussion from 1195 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5847166
- niij 10y ago>On August 15, 2007, the case was heard by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and was dismissed on December 29, 2011 based on a retroactive grant of immunity by Congress for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the government.
- diggan 10y agoI'm not from US and don't fully understand everything that goes on over there, but does this part mean that you can't sue any telecommunications company, just because they have cooperated with the government? How is that sane? Sure, I get it that the company was just following order, but shouldn't you be able to sue the one who made the order in that case? Thinking about it, you should be able to sue people who were blindly following orders, if the following the order means breaking the law.
- totalZero 10y agoI guess it means you would have to sue the government.
- alanwatts 10y agoWhich is circular logic. To sue an entity which you fund is to indrectly sue yourself.
- rayiner 10y agoWhat? No. You can sue your employee after all.
- alanwatts 10y agoWhen suing in a case like this, punitive damages would be paid out of the governments budget, rather than the personal assets of those personally responsible, correct?
- civilian 10y agoYes Alan Watts, everything is connected, but organizations and people can still remain distinct and have different motivations. :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rhizome 10y agoYou can't sue the US government for this without its permission.
- refurb 10y agoCorrect! Sovereign immunity.
- dannyobrien 10y agoYou can read about the ongoing suits that followed Hepting v. AT&T, on EFF's case page: https://eff.org/nsa/ https://eff.org/nsa/ . The timeline is also worth a look: https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline (Disclosure: I work at EFF)
- rayiner 10y agoYes, the applicable statutory immunity grant (FISA Amendments Act Section 802) is very broadly-worded. There was a follow-up case, Jewel v. NSA, that sued the NSA directly for issuing those orders. That case is ongoing: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/jewel-v-nsa-moves-forward-time-nsa-answer-basic-questions-about-mass-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/06/jewel-v-nsa-moves-forw....
- CamperBob2 10y agoYes, but remember, people like Klein and Snowden are traitors working on the payroll of the Russians against US interests, and... Man, I can't even make this stuff up.
- sgnelson 10y agoI want to know how many more of these rooms exist, and where exactly they are. I'm surprised we haven't had many more leaks about them given what I would consider the ease of identifying them. (ie, how many doors out there don't have door handles and sit next to a huge fiber optic networking infrastructure.)
- blablabla123 10y ago... and belong to AT&T with many cables going there :D
- freehunter 10y agoI live in a town of about 5,000 that is 15 minutes from a city of 200,000 and we have an AT&T building in our small downtown. It's about the same size as the frozen yogurt place next door, but it has two 1000+ gallon gas tanks sitting outside. I've lived here for years and never seen anyone go in or out, and the sign on the door says that packages should be delivered to the tavern next door. The door itself has blacked out windows. It's super weird. I'm not saying it's a spy room, I guess it could be a tiny datacenter or switching building, but it's still super weird.
- proactivesvcs 10y agoI live in a village of similar population in the UK and our telephone exchange looks just like a bungalow, situated on the end of a road dotted with similar houses. It's set back further from the road with tall hedging but I managed to cycle past it for eight years without even realising what it was. Weird, but in an opposing way :-)
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoIn the days of Strowger switches, their clacking racket would have blasted you from the bike ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch
- magila 10y agoI work across the street from this building. One thing I noticed is that in early 2015 they boarded up the balcony on the 6th floor. Presumably it was to stop someone from gaining access to this room by climbing up the side of the building and breaking in through the balcony door. http://imgur.com/SA4DRjo http://imgur.com/SA4DRjo
- comboy 10y agoThat's interesting. Why would they do that? I mean if somebody is willing to break through a balcony, traversing between floors shouldn't be a big problem. And the second balcony is quite far away, there could be the same secure entrance between it and the room, as the floor entrance (If you can't just get there through the elevator). Maybe it's more about being able to see people who work there?
- magila 10y agoThat could be, although in the time I've been here I've seen people out on those balconies maybe twice, and one of those was when they were installing a microwave antenna. I get the impression they are there mostly as a place to shelter in an emergency. Edit: Typically the stairs and elevators in buildings like that are pretty well locked down to prevent unauthorized access from inside. The elevator probably opens into a small lobby with heavy locked doors blocking access to the rest of the floor. The balcony doors may not have been so well secured.
- nxzero 10y agoMaybe it's just to protect the antennas from weather.
- kinghajj 10y agoWow, I've been commuting past there for nearly a year and had no idea!
- nxzero 10y ago
- iaw 10y agoThere's no door handle on the exterior to the entrance to the room.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y agoI'm glad someone else noticed how unusual the door is. But I believe I have an explanation. That is a emergency exit door only, you can see the rivets for a door-bar across its middle, and you can also see the alternative entrance door to 641A with lock in this PDF[0] page 14 from the lawsuit. I believe it is using this style of door-bar[1] (note the rivets). But obviously that is speculative. [0] http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/att_klein_wired.pdf http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/att_klein_wire... [1] http://i.imgur.com/NlpaqmH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/NlpaqmH.jpg
- iaw 10y agoYou're probably right, I wonder if there's a door entry that doesn't require some handy-work to enter. Pretty interesting that that could be a defense mechanism
- jmspring 10y agoA family member worked in that building back in the late 80s/early 90s. The shenanigans laid out were already known about and occurring back then. I'm not surprised.
- em3rgent0rdr 10y agoI remember this, from before Obama's presidency, and after.