The US National Security Agency (NSA) has used a unique, decades-old partnership with AT&T to snoop on Internet usage, according to newly disclosed documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
The documents provided by the former National Security Agency contractor and reviewed by the New York Times and non-profit journalism group ProPublica described a “highly collaborative” telecom giant that demonstrated an “extreme willingness to help.”
The New York Times said it was unclear whether the programs are still operational in the same way. The documents were dated from 2003 to 2013.
AT&T granted the agency access to billions of e-mails that traveled through its domestic networks, and helped it wiretap all online communications at UN headquarters, the documents show.
AT&T has provided the Internet line to the world body’s headquarters.
AT&T 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 reporters.
In the documents, AT&T and other companies are not identified by name but are codenamed.
One of the oldest programs, Fairview, was launched in 1985 and involves AT&T, the New York 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 National Security Agency about 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records per day in 2011, after a “push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11,” the newly released documents show.
That same year, the agency spent US$188.9 million on Fairview, more than twice the US$66.8 million spent on the next-largest corporate program, Stormbrew.
Intelligence officials had initially said that the teleophone calls the agency had collected were mostly from landline, not cellular, telephone records, after Snowden first revealed the wiretapping program.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS