Thank You, AT&T

Thank You, AT&T

Back in April, Wired Magazine reported that "AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center," providing the basis for former AT&T tech, whistleblower Mark Klein, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation's class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

Oral arguments in that case start tomorrow.

But more recently, the central role of the AT&T Bridgeton Network Operations Center (NOC) in the monitoring of national Internet traffic has come to light, as further reported in Wired and yesterday by Salon Magazine.

The Bridgeton NOC is located at either 3324 Hollenberg Drive or 12976 Hollenberg Drive, NW of the junction of I-270 and I-70 in Bridgeton, in the office park originally developed by Western Union in the early 1970s off St. Charles Rock Road. Both locations have been listed as addresses for AT&T network services in various sources. They're about 1/4-mile apart.

I'm thinking the 12976 address is the more likely one; especially since 3324 is now occupied by Critical Technologies. 12976 Hollenberg Drive is pretty visible from the ramp from WB 270 to WB 70. Its ownership on county records is listed as "Corporate Property Associates2 Etal At&t" with an address at "55 Corporate Dr, Unit: 21c7, Bridgewater, NJ 08807" That sounds like (the old) AT&T to me.

Meanwhile, while the Secretary of State has no listing for "Corporate Property Associates 2" in its registered business entities, they do have several others in that series. Of note is Corporate Property Associates 9 owned by W.P. Carey & Co. LLC of New York City. W.P. means William P. Carey; and William P. Carey of NYC is a noteworthy donor to many Republican officeholders, including Jim Talent and Roy Blunt.

Isn't data mining fun? ;-)