AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale

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The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The N.S.A.’s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/us/politics/att-helped-nsa-spy-on-an-array-of-internet-traffic.html

[CountAllVotes]

1. and ...

It is far from being done and gone. I still hear those *clicks* on my landline and I've been hearing them for far too many years now.

Change carriers you say? Well, there really aren't any other carriers sadly.

I'd be happy to throw the telephone out the window if I had my way but gee, people get downright angry when you tell them that you do not have a phone and you do not want one of the 'effin things!

FUCK YOU AT&T!!!!

[hunter]

2. There were great debates about this on DU several years ago...

... similar to debates about torture in Iraq, and frequently dismissed by some posters as conspiracy theories.

Now, years later both these issues seem to be simply accepted as common knowledge, with little more than a "meh."

Yesterday's outrages become today's business as usual.

I believe it's a longstanding policy of the oligarchs to simply wear the people out.

[DirkGently]

3. Straight from "conspiracy theory" to "old news."

I remember it well. It was pretty wild seeing supposed Dems leap to the defense of mass warrantless surveillance.

[2banon]

4. Front page, Right column, Above the Fold

It isn't exactly news but apparently NYT thinks it is. I guess better late than never.

What At&t has been doing was revealed over a decade ago by a very brave and honorable WHISTLEBLOWER employee working the basement in AT&T's San Francisco site where this was being done.

I don't remember his name now.. (I once knew his name) and I don't remember if charges of "espionage" or others related to revealing states secrets act were brought against him, but I do recall the endless denials and the ridicule of the whistleblower instead any ridicule of the activity.