More Snowden documents now point to telecoms giant AT&T as a willing partner in the National Security Agency's snooping program. It was revealed that from the period 2003 to 2013, AT&T provided unprecedented access of user data to the spy agency using several methods covered by certain regulations. This, in effect, gave the NSA a bird's eye view of billions of emails being passed back and forth domestically and internationally.
The cooperation of telecoms agencies in spy activities is well-known. However, it would appear that AT&T had a special and close relationship that differed with the NSA's relationships with other telecom companies. In fact, AT&T was considered "highly collaborative" and had an "extreme willingness to help," as reported by the NY Times. Another document even instructs NSA personnel to treat AT&T with special care as "this is a partnership, not a contractual relationship."
To illustrate, AT&T carried out a secret court order to wiretap the United Nations office in New York which is a customer of the telecoms giant. It was also the first telecoms company to receive and try out the latest surveillance equipment created by the agency. Bizjournals reports that these were installed to at least 17 Internet hubs of AT&T. This number exceeds the ones used on Verizon by a huge margin.
AT&T was not named explicitly in the documents and codenames were used. The giveaways were the technical jargon used exclusively by AT&T operations. A closer look at the market shares referred to in the documents also make AT&T and Verizon the correct guesses.
Since AT&T also enjoyed the largest funding for the NSA's corporate programs, it is not clear whether the relationship of AT&T and NSA remains the same today. When asked for comment, AT&T spokesman Brad Burns said, "We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person's life is in danger and time is of the essence."
