‘Major American telecom provider helped NSA with eavesdropping’

Documents show that AT&T, a major US telecom provider, has greatly aided the NSA in eavesdropping. The provider would, among other things, search data itself and forward ‘interesting’ data to the American intelligence service.

The documents were provided by Edward Snowden and examined by The New York Times, which has published about them. In the documents, the NSA describes its relationship with telecom provider AT&T, one of the largest in the United States. According to the intelligence service, AT&T has been “extremely helpful” and describes the “extreme willingness to help.” In one of the documents, NSA employees are even instructed to be friendly when visiting the telecom provider, because the bond is not ‘contractual’ in nature, but rather a ‘partnership’.

Communications obtained by The New York Times show that no telecom provider has worked as closely as AT&T. This collaboration lasted at least ten years; from 2003 to 2013. The program appears to have stopped around the time Edward Snowden began his revelations about the NSA’s spy program, but it’s unclear what the current relationship between the intelligence agency and the provider is.

The American newspaper cites a number of examples of how AT&T has helped with espionage in the past: for example, billions of e-mails have been forwarded to the NSA and technical support has been provided for tapping communications in the United Nations building in New York. . But new eavesdropping techniques were also the first to be tried out at AT&T and eavesdropping equipment has been installed at seventeen locations where internet hubs are located.

In many cases, AT&T would have searched collected data packets, including telephone calls and Internet traffic such as e-mail, and then passed on interesting data to the NSA. Incidentally, this concerns data from foreign internet users: the NSA did not need a court order for this, so that providers could pass on the data. It is also possible for Americans to collect a lot of foreign communication, because a lot of traffic runs through American servers.

In a response, an AT&T spokesperson said it would not voluntarily provide any information. There was no further comment on the report. Documents previously showed that the NSA has direct access to the servers of tech companies in the Prism program. Most of the accused tech companies deny that they participate in the espionage practices.