AT&T helped the NSA spy on the United Nations, an AT&T customer, thanks to technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order.
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By 2011, AT&T was providing the NSA with over 1 billion domestic cellphone records a day.
The report, done in conjunction with a report from ProPublica, was based on documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Sowden and cited an internal agency newsletter for the information on the cell phone records.
Newly disclosed documents unveiling the close relationship between the National Security Agency and AT&T could breathe new life into a long-running legal dispute about the NSA’s controversial method of tapping the Internet backbone on U.S. soil.
AT&T installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its US Internet hubs, far more than competitor Verizon Communications, the Times reported.
According to the Times, the two organizations had a “partnership, not a contractual relationship” that positioned AT&T to assist in a wide range of classified surveillance activities. The Times and ProPublica (an independent non-profit newsroom) jointly reviewed the documents supplied by Snowden and published their findings simultaneously.
As per the article, the documents actually do not name AT&T but used code names that the Times and Pro Publica concluded referred to the company. The new documents reveal a far bigger conspiracy between AT&T and the NSA.
The documents say AT&T started sending email and phone call data to the NSA “within days” after the Bush Administration began warrantless surveillance in October 2001. “It’s also time that the public U.S. courts decide whether these modern general searches are consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure”. Reporters from The New York Times and ProPublica sifted through another batch of NSA documents from Snowden’s tranche and found interworkings that should concern a free people. The company helped transform the United Nations headquarters into an NSA listening post, with all UN internet communications passing into the hands of surveillance agents.
“The NSA’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 investigation revealed.
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This appears to be an affirmation of earlier reports that AT& T and other network service providers fail to protect their customers’ privacy or prevent outsiders’ reach by their accommodation of NSA’ s request for unlimited access. This has been confirmed by several former intelligence officials.
