New documents reveal AT&T's hand in NSA spy program
Newly disclosed documents reveal a close partnership between the National Security Agency and telecommunications giant AT&T that helped bolster the spy agency鈥檚 monitoring of Americans鈥� Internet activity.
The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward Snowden, show that, over the course of decades and under a variety of legal rules, AT&T gave the NSA access to billions of emails that flowed through its domestic networks and helped carry out a secret court order that allowed the wiretapping of Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, according to an analysis of the reports by and .
The revelations could draw renewed attention to the between the NSA and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital civil liberties group that is suing the spy agency on behalf of AT&T customers to stop what the EFF says is the 鈥渋llegal unconstitutional and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records.鈥�
The new documents paint a picture of NSA surveillance on AT&T鈥檚 Internet backbone in the United States, and could be central to the EFF鈥檚 case, .
鈥淧rivacy advocates have long argued in court that grabbing portions of so many emails 鈥� involving people not suspected of anything 鈥� is a violation of the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures provided by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,鈥� the news outlet reports.
EFF executive director Cindy Cohn told ProPublica that the foundation will present the new information in court.
The relationship between AT&T and the NSA stretches as far back as 1985 through the program called Fairview, according to the Times/ProPublica report. Other telecom companies have partnered with the agency, as well, but AT&T 鈥� identified in the documents not by name but through a code name 鈥� is behind 80 percent of the information the NSA collects, according to one document.
In 2003, AT&T became the first of the NSA鈥檚 corporate partners to set up a new collection capability that the agency called a 鈥� 鈥榣ive鈥� presence on the global net.鈥� In one of the first months of operation, the program was forwarding more than a million emails a day to the NSA鈥檚 headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
In response to the report, AT&T spokesman Brad Burns told the Times: 鈥淲e do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person鈥檚 life is in danger and time is of the essence.鈥�
