Former AT&T technician Mark Klein traveled to Washington Wednesday to urge lawmakers not to give AT&T, Verizon and other telecom companies immunity from lawsuits over their role in the government’s domestic spying operations. Last year Klein leaked internal AT&T documents that revealed AT&T had set up a secret room in its San Francisco office to give the National Security Agency access to its fiber optic Internet cables.

Mark Klein: “They were copying everything flowing across the Internet cables and the major Internet links between AT&T’s network and other company’s networks. And it struck me at the time that this is a massively unconstitutional, illegal operation. It affects not only AT&T’s customers, but everybody, because these links went to places like Sprint, Qwest, a whole bunch of other companies, and so they’re basically tapping into the entire Internet.”