Posted on 08/15/2015 2:03:47 PM PDT by Theoria
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.
One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, “This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”
The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, were jointly reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. The N.S.A., AT&T and Verizon declined to discuss the findings from the files. “We don’t comment on matters of national security,” an AT&T spokesman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Did not read ,but,this is news??.ATT VZ one in the same own the the thing,aka,WWW,they built it.whad ja expect?
“AT&T facilities”
YUP CO’s, Central Offices,theres one on every corner.....
Maybe the NSA at least gets better service out of them than I do.
Ditto.
Well duh..... 35 years in the telecom industry as a senior engineer and executive management ....I helped design and install these system....
Still can’t talk about it since I signed National Security Agreements...they never expire,,,,
But did anyone really believe that international traffic wasn’t monitored? Both voice and data?
And international traffic should be.
But not domestic traffic where both ends are in the US. That’s where the NSA has gone to far.
Yup... I was only involved in international traffic but systems like Carnivore was instituted in England by a joint venture between the CIA and British Intelligence.... Carriers routed some of their domestic traffic via a hub to Great Britain where British Intelligence could look at the content ( not CIA) and legally monitor us citizens.... Then they could legally share the info with the CIA since foreign intelligence agencies can share info....
This kept everyone legal ,,,,, unethical in my opinion ,, but legal,,,, using foreign intelligence agencies to spy on Americans,,,,,
Ping.
AT&T carries nearly 90 PETABYTES of data every day.
There’s analysis, and then there’s analysis...
They should only be archived for 50 years....
EVERYTHING should be declassified after a set period of time. Preferably a rather short one.
It should be as hard to classify information and it should be to get welfare benefits: not impossible, but damned difficult with very frequent checking to see if it is still necessary.
No argument there. Part of my career dealt with data that was super critical but had a very short shelf life as far as our being able to leverage it for our purposes. Top Secret in the morning and on AFRTS that evening. My comment was more specifically aimed at the fact that most agreements we sign are archived for 50 years - such as when we are removed from access programs for reasons like retiring/separating from jobs that required access.
>> the spy agency
FU, NYT.
Happy supporter of the NSA and USPS :)
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