GAP Client’s Affidavit Affects Immunity Vote

An ABC News story details how the disclosures of a GAP client to key House officials last week helped lead to the stopping of an agreement to grant telecommunication companies retroactive immunity as part of the highly-debated warrantless wiretapping/national security bill. From the article:

Late last week, conventional wisdom said that the House wouldn't stand firm against an effort by big telecommunications companies and the Bush administration to forgive the telcos for any violations of law they committed while assisting with a top secret domestic surveillance program.

But that apparently changed after the whistle-blower group Government Accountability Project made public the assertion by security expert Babak Pasdar that he had once discovered a high-speed data line that may have been a part of a domestic spying program.

These allegations prompted the House officials to write a “Dear Colleagues” letter last week outlining the client’s allegations to other members of Congress. GAP and a coalition of groups sent a letter to all members of Congress yesterday urging them to review our client’s (Babak Pasdar) affidavit before voting on the bill (which debate is scheduled for today). The letter summarized concerns laid out in the affidavit:

“An unnamed major wireless telecommunications carrier may have given the government unmonitored access to data communications from that company’s mobile devices, including e-mail, text messages, and Internet use… [T]he line was configured so that the carrier could have no record of what information had been transmitted. Of equal concern was his allegation that there was no security to protect this line -- an unheard of vulnerability in a carrier environment.”

You can find GAP’s talking points about the affidavit here.

-- Dylan Blaylock