1 00:00:18,640 --> 00:00:22,480 Mark Klein (archival audio: It's room 641A says on the door, and 2 00:00:22,480 --> 00:00:25,679 what's mysterious about it is there's no door handle. 3 00:00:25,679 --> 00:00:28,000 So it looks kinda odd. 4 00:00:33,119 --> 00:00:35,920 Daina Bouquin: There is a room on the sixth floor of a building 5 00:00:35,920 --> 00:00:38,560 on Folsom Street in San Francisco. 6 00:00:38,560 --> 00:00:42,880 And Mark Klein is not allowed to go in. 7 00:00:42,880 --> 00:00:46,640 If you know Mark, you know that's strange. 8 00:00:46,640 --> 00:00:50,719 Because for 22 years, going into rooms like this has been 9 00:00:50,719 --> 00:00:51,679 his job. 10 00:00:51,679 --> 00:00:55,840 Rooms full of routers and modems and the perpetual 11 00:00:55,840 --> 00:00:59,520 mechanical whirr of the machines that make our phones work and 12 00:00:59,520 --> 00:01:00,719 the internet run. 13 00:01:00,719 --> 00:01:05,599 Mark has keys to every door in the building except for this 14 00:01:05,599 --> 00:01:05,920 one. 15 00:01:05,920 --> 00:01:09,760 Only one man in the building has the clearance to walk 16 00:01:09,760 --> 00:01:12,319 through this door, and it is not him. 17 00:01:12,319 --> 00:01:18,400 One day the air conditioner inside the room starts to leak. 18 00:01:18,400 --> 00:01:23,599 Water comes down through the floor onto the equipment below. 19 00:01:23,599 --> 00:01:27,280 But that one man isn't available to fix it, so the 20 00:01:27,280 --> 00:01:28,799 water keeps coming. 21 00:01:28,799 --> 00:01:30,239 For days. 22 00:01:30,239 --> 00:01:35,040 Emergency or not, no one else is allowed in. 23 00:01:35,040 --> 00:01:39,760 Mark Klein wonders what is in that room. 24 00:01:39,760 --> 00:01:42,560 And he is going to find out. 25 00:01:42,560 --> 00:01:47,439 Then he is going to spend the rest of his life trying to tell 26 00:01:47,439 --> 00:01:47,760 you. 27 00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:53,120 I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is Found in the Machine. 28 00:01:53,120 --> 00:01:59,519 From my house in western Massachusetts, I can see the top 29 00:01:59,519 --> 00:02:00,879 of Mount Greylock. 30 00:02:00,879 --> 00:02:05,359 It is the highest point in the state, and there is a stone 31 00:02:05,359 --> 00:02:07,439 memorial tower at the summit. 32 00:02:07,439 --> 00:02:10,479 At night the tower lights up. 33 00:02:10,479 --> 00:02:14,240 It is very small from where I stand. 34 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:18,479 But my five-year-old son can see it from his window too. 35 00:02:18,479 --> 00:02:24,240 One evening, around dusk, he asked me what the other one was. 36 00:02:24,240 --> 00:02:26,960 I didn't know what he meant. 37 00:02:26,960 --> 00:02:28,319 The other what? 38 00:02:28,319 --> 00:02:31,120 He pointed. 39 00:02:31,840 --> 00:02:34,080 The one next to it, he said. 40 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:37,680 So I turned and I really looked. 41 00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:42,080 And there, just to the right of the tower that I looked at 42 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:46,479 every single day, was a faint line standing out against the 43 00:02:46,479 --> 00:02:47,759 fading sky. 44 00:02:47,759 --> 00:02:49,680 A radio tower. 45 00:02:49,680 --> 00:02:52,240 I had simply edited it out. 46 00:02:52,240 --> 00:02:56,319 And I think we do that with almost all of them. 47 00:02:56,319 --> 00:03:00,879 Some towers we just stop noticing, and others we hide on 48 00:03:00,879 --> 00:03:01,599 purpose. 49 00:03:01,599 --> 00:03:05,439 We dress them up as ugly pine trees planted along the highways 50 00:03:05,439 --> 00:03:08,319 so the thing carrying our voices disappears into the 51 00:03:08,319 --> 00:03:09,120 scenery. 52 00:03:09,120 --> 00:03:13,199 But the towers are only the part that rises above the 53 00:03:13,199 --> 00:03:13,759 ground. 54 00:03:13,759 --> 00:03:17,120 The signals they catch do not stay in the air. 55 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:18,800 They dive. 56 00:03:18,800 --> 00:03:21,360 Straight down into the earth. 57 00:03:21,360 --> 00:03:26,319 The waves become light pulsing through dark conduits, running 58 00:03:26,319 --> 00:03:30,479 beneath the roads, crawling across the cold, crushing black 59 00:03:30,479 --> 00:03:32,000 of the ocean floor. 60 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:34,159 It is vast. 61 00:03:34,159 --> 00:03:39,360 It may be the largest machine human beings have ever built, 62 00:03:39,360 --> 00:03:43,439 and most of us have trained ourselves not to see any of it. 63 00:03:43,439 --> 00:03:46,879 We have to be told that it's there. 64 00:03:46,879 --> 00:03:49,759 Sometimes by a child. 65 00:03:49,759 --> 00:03:55,759 And anything you have stopped seeing is an easy thing to 66 00:03:55,759 --> 00:03:56,400 steal. 67 00:03:56,400 --> 00:04:01,039 Twenty years ago, in a windowless building with a 68 00:04:01,039 --> 00:04:04,960 secret room, Mark Klein found a thief. 69 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:08,240 But that's not where he started. 70 00:04:08,240 --> 00:04:12,400 He went to Cornell in 1962 and enrolled at the School of 71 00:04:12,400 --> 00:04:13,360 Engineering. 72 00:04:13,360 --> 00:04:17,839 But somewhere along the way, Mark put down engineering. 73 00:04:17,839 --> 00:04:22,959 He graduated in 1966 with a degree not in electronics, but 74 00:04:22,959 --> 00:04:23,920 in history. 75 00:04:23,920 --> 00:04:29,519 A historian is trained to look past the official press release. 76 00:04:29,519 --> 00:04:32,720 They go looking for the primary source. 77 00:04:32,720 --> 00:04:36,160 That instinct never left him. 78 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:38,879 But the world was hurtling towards a future built on 79 00:04:38,879 --> 00:04:40,480 silicon and circuitry. 80 00:04:40,480 --> 00:04:43,519 So in the end, Mark did go to technical school. 81 00:04:43,519 --> 00:04:46,000 He learned the machines after all. 82 00:04:46,000 --> 00:04:50,079 And by 1981, he landed a job at AT&T. 83 00:04:50,079 --> 00:04:54,720 Now, fast forward to the summer of 2002. 84 00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:59,519 Mark is sitting at his workstation in an AT&T office on 85 00:04:59,519 --> 00:05:01,839 Geary Street in San Francisco. 86 00:05:01,839 --> 00:05:04,000 An email comes in. 87 00:05:04,000 --> 00:05:08,160 A representative from the National Security Agency, the 88 00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:11,759 NSA, is coming to visit the office. 89 00:05:11,759 --> 00:05:15,120 Mark happens to be the one who opens the door when the agent 90 00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:15,920 arrives. 91 00:05:15,920 --> 00:05:20,959 A closed-mouthed, unsmiling man who conducts his interviews and 92 00:05:20,959 --> 00:05:21,920 leaves. 93 00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:26,879 Soon after, Mark learns that one of his colleagues has been 94 00:05:26,879 --> 00:05:30,399 transferred to a building on Folsom Street to work in a 95 00:05:30,399 --> 00:05:33,600 large, newly built room on the sixth floor. 96 00:05:33,600 --> 00:05:37,040 No one is really sure what the room is for. 97 00:05:37,040 --> 00:05:42,319 Then at lunch one day, another colleague mentions that rooms 98 00:05:42,319 --> 00:05:46,560 just like it are going up in other AT &T buildings in other 99 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:47,680 cities too. 100 00:05:47,680 --> 00:05:52,800 Now you have to remember what the United States was like 101 00:05:52,800 --> 00:05:54,000 around this time. 102 00:05:54,000 --> 00:05:56,800 So soon after September 11th. 103 00:05:56,800 --> 00:06:01,360 America was afraid and the government was on high alert. 104 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:06,079 Inside the Defense Department, a man named John Poindexter had 105 00:06:06,079 --> 00:06:09,199 proposed a system that he said would protect the country. 106 00:06:09,199 --> 00:06:12,160 The system would just need to see almost everything about 107 00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:12,959 everyone. 108 00:06:12,959 --> 00:06:17,439 He called it Total Information Awareness. 109 00:06:17,439 --> 00:06:21,279 The idea was to build a dragnet so complete that no threat 110 00:06:21,279 --> 00:06:22,160 could hide. 111 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:28,399 Financial records, medical files, browsing history, your 112 00:06:28,399 --> 00:06:32,240 face, your gait, your veterinary records. 113 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:36,240 The program became public and Congress killed it in 2003. 114 00:06:36,240 --> 00:06:39,680 It was too much and the name was too honest. 115 00:06:39,680 --> 00:06:43,680 Even a rebrand to Terrorism Information Awareness couldn't 116 00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:44,560 save it. 117 00:06:44,560 --> 00:06:49,120 But killing a program is not the same as killing an idea. 118 00:06:49,120 --> 00:06:51,600 The architecture survived. 119 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:55,199 It just moved deeper into the hands of the NSA. 120 00:06:55,199 --> 00:07:00,879 This is the world Mark Klein walks into in the fall of 2003 121 00:07:00,879 --> 00:07:05,120 when he is also transferred to AT&T's Folsom Street facility. 122 00:07:05,120 --> 00:07:11,279 This building is massive, a brutalist fortress with almost 123 00:07:11,279 --> 00:07:12,720 no window light. 124 00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:16,879 It is also a vital organ in the anatomy of the American 125 00:07:16,879 --> 00:07:17,519 Internet. 126 00:07:17,519 --> 00:07:19,759 It's a peering hub. 127 00:07:19,759 --> 00:07:24,000 A place where AT&T's network physically shakes hands with the 128 00:07:24,000 --> 00:07:25,680 networks of other companies. 129 00:07:25,680 --> 00:07:29,839 It's part of what is referred to as the internet backbone. 130 00:07:29,839 --> 00:07:34,399 Data from millions of people flows into this building, 131 00:07:34,399 --> 00:07:39,040 travels up to the seventh floor, gets sorted by massive routers, 132 00:07:39,040 --> 00:07:43,120 and is sent back out into the world to find its destination. 133 00:07:43,120 --> 00:07:48,879 But Mark soon finds that not all of the data is leaving the 134 00:07:48,879 --> 00:07:49,759 building. 135 00:07:49,759 --> 00:07:53,920 While he is learning the ropes in the cavernous seventh floor 136 00:07:53,920 --> 00:07:58,240 internet room, he asks an older coworker about the secret room 137 00:07:58,240 --> 00:07:59,920 down on the sixth floor. 138 00:07:59,920 --> 00:08:02,160 Room 641A. 139 00:08:02,160 --> 00:08:06,480 Mark assumes it's for listening to phone calls because the 140 00:08:06,480 --> 00:08:08,399 phone switch is right next door. 141 00:08:08,399 --> 00:08:10,879 No, he says. Internet. The coworker shows him a cabinet in the internet room. A splitter cabinet. Here is how a fiber-optic splitter works. A strand of fiber is a pipe full of light. That light is your data. To tap it, you cut open the fiber coming down from the routers. You splice a bit of special glass into that wound to create a fork. When the light hits the fork, it splits. 142 00:08:10,879 --> 00:08:51,039 It's called fiber tapping, and it is passive. 143 00:08:51,039 --> 00:08:55,919 It doesn't require electricity or have a computer brain. 144 00:08:55,919 --> 00:08:59,600 Because it is just a piece of molded glass, it makes a clone 145 00:08:59,600 --> 00:09:01,120 of the data silently. 146 00:09:01,120 --> 00:09:04,000 It doesn't leave a digital footprint. 147 00:09:04,000 --> 00:09:07,919 One half of the light continues on its normal journey out to 148 00:09:07,919 --> 00:09:09,600 the person who it was meant for. 149 00:09:09,600 --> 00:09:14,000 While the other half, the exact duplicate of every email and 150 00:09:14,000 --> 00:09:16,799 search query, is diverted. 151 00:09:16,799 --> 00:09:22,000 It gets fed down a separate line into room 641A. 152 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:27,519 And the illusion of privacy stays intact. 153 00:09:27,519 --> 00:09:34,960 Time passes, and Mark's unease about the secret room grows. 154 00:09:34,960 --> 00:09:38,480 But he does his job in the internet room. 155 00:09:38,480 --> 00:09:42,799 Then one day a coworker hands Mark a set of documents that had 156 00:09:42,799 --> 00:09:45,279 been left lying around on top of a router. 157 00:09:45,279 --> 00:09:50,879 Mark takes them back to his desk, and of course he reads 158 00:09:50,879 --> 00:09:51,200 them. 159 00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:55,279 When he realizes what he is holding, he almost falls out of 160 00:09:55,279 --> 00:09:56,159 his chair. 161 00:09:56,159 --> 00:10:02,720 The documents show that in February 2003, AT &T cut into 16 162 00:10:02,720 --> 00:10:06,240 high-speed internet peering links and installed a device 163 00:10:06,240 --> 00:10:09,440 called a Narus STA 6400. 164 00:10:09,440 --> 00:10:14,639 STA stands for Semantic Traffic Analyzer. 165 00:10:14,639 --> 00:10:19,440 This machine is built to swallow data at incomprehensible 166 00:10:19,440 --> 00:10:24,000 speeds, to sift through noise, capture the light, and read 167 00:10:24,000 --> 00:10:28,399 everything, looking for whatever someone programs it to find. 168 00:10:28,399 --> 00:10:33,679 And there are other rooms in other AT &T buildings across the 169 00:10:33,679 --> 00:10:36,960 country, just like 641A. 170 00:10:36,960 --> 00:10:43,440 If Mark speaks up, he is going to lose his job, lose the 171 00:10:43,440 --> 00:10:44,080 pension. 172 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:46,480 He might go to federal prison. 173 00:10:46,480 --> 00:10:50,879 The Espionage Act does not look kindly on people who talk about 174 00:10:50,879 --> 00:10:52,720 the National Security Agency. 175 00:10:52,720 --> 00:10:56,000 But he is sure he can't be the only one who knows. 176 00:10:56,000 --> 00:11:01,440 In May 2004, Mark Klein retires. 177 00:11:01,440 --> 00:11:05,279 But when he leaves the building for the last time, he takes the 178 00:11:05,279 --> 00:11:06,639 documents with him. 179 00:11:06,639 --> 00:11:09,919 The historian holds on to the primary sources. 180 00:11:09,919 --> 00:11:13,279 He takes them home and puts them in a drawer. 181 00:11:13,279 --> 00:11:15,679 And still he waits. 182 00:11:15,679 --> 00:11:18,559 Over a year passes. 183 00:11:18,559 --> 00:11:23,360 Then, in December 2005, the New York Times publishes an 184 00:11:23,360 --> 00:11:25,759 explosive Pulitzer-winning story. 185 00:11:25,759 --> 00:11:28,639 They reveal that the Bush administration has been running 186 00:11:28,639 --> 00:11:31,840 a secret, warrantless wiretapping program in the wake 187 00:11:31,840 --> 00:11:33,039 of 9-11. 188 00:11:33,039 --> 00:11:35,440 The secret is finally out. 189 00:11:35,440 --> 00:11:39,120 But the government pushes back on the story. 190 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:02,799 In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with US law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known [leaks] links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. Before we intercept these 191 00:12:02,799 --> 00:12:06,320 communications, the government must have information that 192 00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:10,000 establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks. 193 00:12:10,000 --> 00:12:15,360 This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our 194 00:12:15,360 --> 00:12:16,639 national security. 195 00:12:19,039 --> 00:12:21,039 Daina Bouquin: Mark knows this is a lie. 196 00:12:21,039 --> 00:12:24,240 The thing he saw, it doesn't listen to specific people. 197 00:12:24,240 --> 00:12:26,799 It splits the light. 198 00:12:26,799 --> 00:12:29,919 And he realizes something else. 199 00:12:29,919 --> 00:12:34,080 Anyone who knows the truth at AT&T is still employed there, 200 00:12:34,080 --> 00:12:37,679 and he may be the only one who knows and is free. 201 00:12:37,679 --> 00:12:44,080 So in early 2006, Mark makes the decision that will reshape 202 00:12:44,080 --> 00:12:45,519 the rest of his life. 203 00:12:45,519 --> 00:12:47,759 He stops waiting. 204 00:12:47,759 --> 00:12:52,000 Mark puts on a trench coat, gathers his schematics, and 205 00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:56,159 walks into the offices of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, 206 00:12:56,159 --> 00:13:00,000 a digital rights group in San Francisco's mission district. 207 00:13:00,000 --> 00:13:03,039 Mark sits down with their lawyers. 208 00:13:03,039 --> 00:13:06,399 He tells them about Room 641A. 209 00:13:06,399 --> 00:13:10,559 He explains the splitter cabinet and signs a sworn 210 00:13:10,559 --> 00:13:11,519 declaration. 211 00:13:11,519 --> 00:13:16,240 The EFF uses Mark's evidence to file a sweeping class action 212 00:13:16,240 --> 00:13:18,320 lawsuit, Hepting v. 213 00:13:18,320 --> 00:13:19,440 AT&T. 214 00:13:19,440 --> 00:13:23,279 For one bright moment, it looks like the machine might come 215 00:13:23,279 --> 00:13:23,840 apart. 216 00:13:23,840 --> 00:13:26,480 But then the government does two things. 217 00:13:26,480 --> 00:13:30,559 First, it told the court that the case could not go forward 218 00:13:30,559 --> 00:13:33,039 because everything about it was a state secret. 219 00:13:33,039 --> 00:13:37,440 The court disagrees, but in the end it doesn't matter. 220 00:13:37,440 --> 00:13:41,600 Because Congress reaches back and rewrites the past. 221 00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:47,360 In 2008, they pass a law that makes every company that opened 222 00:13:47,360 --> 00:13:50,159 its wires to the government untouchable. 223 00:13:50,159 --> 00:13:54,080 You could no longer sue them because as of that morning they 224 00:13:54,080 --> 00:13:56,000 had never broken the law. 225 00:13:56,000 --> 00:14:00,559 That same statute made the machine itself legal going 226 00:14:00,559 --> 00:14:01,200 forward. 227 00:14:01,200 --> 00:14:04,399 So the case against AT&T is dismissed. 228 00:14:04,399 --> 00:14:08,720 Not because Mark was wrong, but because Congress changed the 229 00:14:08,720 --> 00:14:09,679 rules. 230 00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:13,679 The lawyers tried again with a new suit, but the court said 231 00:14:13,679 --> 00:14:15,840 Mark's evidence wasn't enough. 232 00:14:15,840 --> 00:14:20,399 They said although he could describe the machine, because he 233 00:14:20,399 --> 00:14:22,960 did not work in the room, he could not speak to what was 234 00:14:22,960 --> 00:14:25,200 happening on the other side of the door. 235 00:14:25,200 --> 00:14:28,799 The door he could not open. 236 00:14:28,799 --> 00:14:33,200 Mark Klein lived another 20 years. 237 00:14:33,200 --> 00:14:35,039 He wrote a book. 238 00:14:35,039 --> 00:14:37,120 He gave interviews. 239 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:39,039 Then he got sick. 240 00:14:39,039 --> 00:14:43,600 And in March 2025, he passed away at 79. 241 00:14:43,600 --> 00:14:47,600 His documents remain a cornerstone for privacy 242 00:14:47,600 --> 00:14:49,200 activists and lawyers. 243 00:14:49,200 --> 00:14:52,399 But the machine he found never turned off. 244 00:14:52,399 --> 00:14:56,080 The statute that lets the U.S. 245 00:14:56,080 --> 00:14:59,519 government pull data from the Internet backbone without 246 00:14:59,519 --> 00:15:02,720 warrants is FISA Section 702. 247 00:15:02,720 --> 00:15:07,759 Congress actually let it expire in June 2026, but the machine 248 00:15:07,759 --> 00:15:09,200 didn't even slow down. 249 00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:13,279 A secret court called the FISA court had already signed off in 250 00:15:13,279 --> 00:15:14,559 another year. 251 00:15:14,559 --> 00:15:29,200 You cannot write a spy thriller about a work order to install a 252 00:15:29,200 --> 00:15:30,720 splitter cabinet. 253 00:15:30,720 --> 00:15:33,440 But that's what Mark had. 254 00:15:33,440 --> 00:15:38,159 A quiet technician showed up with some schematics, and it 255 00:15:38,159 --> 00:15:40,240 didn't look like Watergate. 256 00:15:40,240 --> 00:15:42,799 It looked like math and glass. 257 00:15:42,799 --> 00:15:48,879 And we don't feel it when they take half the light. 258 00:15:48,879 --> 00:15:52,080 We don't even notice the light. 259 00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:56,559 We edit out the towers on the horizon, and our words run 260 00:15:56,559 --> 00:15:58,639 unfelt beneath our feet. 261 00:15:58,639 --> 00:16:03,679 The room is still there and the door is still locked. 262 00:16:03,679 --> 00:16:07,200 Yet, we feel fine. I'm Daina Bouquin, and this is Found in the Machine. If you would like to hear more from me and find out what didn't make it into this episode, you can go to notes.foundinthemachine.com. Thanks for listening.