Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Tracking & Law Enforcement

Leaked NSA Documents Show AT&T Helped Spy Agency: Report

The US National Security Agency has used a unique, decades-old partnership with AT&T to snoop on Internet usage, according to newly disclosed documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The US National Security Agency has used a unique, decades-old partnership with AT&T to snoop on Internet usage, according to newly disclosed documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The documents provided by the former NSA contractor and reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica described a “highly collaborative” telecom giant that demonstrated an “extreme willingness to help.”

The Times said it was unclear whether the programs are still operational in the same way today. The documents were dated from 2003 to 2013.

AT&T granted the NSA access to billions of emails that traveled through its domestic networks, and helped the spy agency wiretap all online communications at United Nations headquarters, the documents show.

AT&T has provided the Internet line to the world body’s headquarters.

Company spokesman Brad Burns insisted that “we do not provide information to any investigating authorities without a court order or other mandatory process other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence.”

“For example, in a kidnapping situation we could provide help tracking down called numbers to assist law enforcement,” he told AFP.

In the documents, AT&T and other companies are not identified by name but rather codenamed.

One of the oldest programs, Fairview, was launched in 1985 and involves AT&T, the Times and ProPublica said, citing several former intelligence officials.

A Fairview fiber optic cable damaged during the 2011 Japan earthquake, for example, was repaired on the same date as an AT&T cable.

The program spied on the UN headquarters Internet line in response to an order by the special US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the documents show.

Washington has since told the UN it would not collect data on its communications.

Verizon and the former MCI — which Verizon purchased in 2006 — are part of another program, codenamed Stormbrew.

AT&T began providing to the NSA some 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day in 2011, after a “push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” the newly released documents showed.

That same year, the NSA spent $188.9 million on Fairview, more than twice the amount on the next-largest corporate program, Stormbrew ($66.8 million).

Intelligence officials had initially said that the phone calls the NSA had collected were mostly from landline, not cellular, phone records, after Snowden first revealed the wiretapping program.

Written By

AFP 2023

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Cybercrime

The FBI dismantled the network of the prolific Hive ransomware gang and seized infrastructure in Los Angeles that was used for the operation.

Ransomware

The Hive ransomware website has been seized as part of an operation that involved law enforcement in 10 countries.

Cybercrime

Spanish Court agreed to extradite Joseph James O’Connor to he U.S., who allegedly took part in the July 2020 hacking of Twitter accounts of...

Ransomware

US government reminds the public that a reward of up to $10 million is offered for information on cybercriminals, including members of the Hive...

Cybercrime

A hacker who reportedly posed as the CEO of a financial institution claims to have obtained access to the more than 80,000-member database of...

Privacy

Employees of Chinese tech giant ByteDance improperly accessed data from social media platform TikTok to track journalists in a bid to identify the source...

Cybercrime

Russian Vladislav Klyushin made tens of millions of dollars by hacking into U.S. computer networks to steal insider information.