Here's the issue: many suspect that the NSA has been directly tapping into the Internet backbone lines owned by AT&T, Level 3, Sprint and Verizon. If these companies I mentioned aren't speaking up to curb the NSA's activities, that original "open letter" is all for naught.
You got that right!!! Thanks for that info. I know I read the NSA has a few switches installed at certain key places. These switches divert (I guess mirror) the flow over an internet backbone. I remember ATT and Verizon being mentioned where these switches were installed.
This mirrored flow gets sent to NSA in Maryland and Utah. Seems that Ft Meade does the analysis while Utah NSA is mostly for storage. Archived for immediate retrieval if necessary