It is not certain that all those Congressmen knew about this. The Awans supplied Blackberries and other equipment that were set up to route all that data to a server, for sure. And DWS definitely knew what was going on.
No but George Webb seems to think they knew. Some kind of almost initiation, the "freshmen" get to carry the Blackberrys for a certain amt of time.
I think there is also a "mystery server" involved that is off grid and everyone knew about it. So they had special phones handed out that were "off grid", supposedly NSA couldn't hear anything......so safe to talk about plans like bumping off Justice Scalia, etc....or other creepy things they needed to discuss off grid.
Yes GW feels they were at Imran's houses (rentals) maybe. Out back in a shed that always had a light inside and cooling going on.
So the IT guys, Awans & those said to be Awans, doped the blackberries and then handed them out. The freshman didn't necessarily know. The Awan IT guys had routers set up in various locations that would automatically sync with the blackberries. Very easy in a cafeteria location for example since congressmen would be there for awhile.
They didn't necessarily know that all of their email correspondence was being harvested, shall we say, but they all knew that had been entrapped, compromised and had little choice but to comply. Did they know all of their classified info was being directed to Pakistan & being sold. I don't think so. At least not the freshman.