The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit requesting that a judge unseal a San Francisco courthouse file delineating AT&T's alleged participation in the NSA's warrantless domestic wiretap operation, but AT&T is insisting the file remained sealed, asserting that information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Wired News reported on May 22 that it decided to publish the complete text of documents from the Electronic Frontier Foundation primary witness in the case, former AT&T employee and whistle-blower Mark Klein.

Thirty pages of documents are now posted on the Wired News Web site along with an affidavit attributed to Klein, eight AT&T "proprietary" documents and several news articles and other public information related to government-surveillance issues.

Wired News wrote, "The AT&T documents appear to be excerpted from material that was later filed in the lawsuit under seal. But we can't be entirely sure, because the protective order prevents us from comparing the two sets of documents.

"This week, we are joining in efforts to bring this evidence to light in its entirety. We are filing a motion to intervene in the case in order to request that the court unseal the evidence, joining other news and civil rights organizations that have already done so, including the EFF, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Associated Press and Bloomberg.

"Before publishing these documents we showed them to independent security experts, who agreed they pose no danger to AT&T. For example, they do not reveal sensitive information that hackers might use to attack the company's systems.

"The court's gag order is very specific in barring only the EFF, its representatives and its technical experts from discussing and disseminating this information. The court explicitly rejected AT&T's motion to include Klein in the gag order and declined AT&T's request to force the EFF to return the documents."

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