Report : AT&T Helped N.S.A. Spy On Internet Traffic

(RTTNews) - 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 the telecom giant AT&T Inc. (T), the New York Times reported on Saturday, quoting newly disclosed NSA documents.

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."

Quoting the documents, the report said that AT&T's cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, 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 report stated that the National Security Agency documents shed new light on the agency's relationship through the years with American telecommunications companies. They show how the agency's partnership with AT&T has been particularly important, enabling it to conduct surveillance, under several different legal rules, of international and foreign-to-foreign Internet communications that passed through network hubs on American soil.

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, the report said.

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, "This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship."