AT&T whistle-blower among award winners

A whistle-blower credited with providing key documents in a lawsuit over the Bush administration's secretive domestic wiretapping program is one of three recipients of the "Pioneer Awards" from a civil-rights group that brought the challenge.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued AT&T Inc., accusing it of colluding with the National Security Agency to make communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants.

As part of its case, the EFF said it obtained documents from Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who said the documents detail secret NSA spying rooms and electronic surveillance equipment in AT&T facilities.

The EFF will give Klein a Pioneer Award at a ceremony in San Diego on Tuesday. The award does not carry a cash prize.

Also receiving the 17th annual awards is Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor whom the EFF credited with helping to stop a Canadian copyright proposal that it said would have hurt consumer rights.

A third prize goes jointly to the Mozilla Foundation and its chairwoman, Mitchell Baker. The foundation is the organization that oversees the open-source Firefox browser, a strong alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s market-dominant, proprietary Internet Explorer. The EFF credited Mozilla with promoting openness and innovation on the Internet.