{"id":62566,"date":"2015-08-17T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=62566"},"modified":"2015-08-16T21:02:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-16T20:02:17","slug":"nsa-spying-relies-on-atts-extreme-willingness-to-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/nsa-spying-relies-on-atts-extreme-willingness-to-help\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA Spying Relies on AT&T\u2019s \u2018Extreme Willingness to Help\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Security Agency<\/a>\u2019s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"nsa<\/a><\/p>\n

15 Aug 2015 – <\/em>While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as \u201chighly collaborative,\u201d while another lauded the company\u2019s \u201cextreme willingness to help.\u201d<\/p>\n

AT&T\u2019s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.<\/p>\n

The N.S.A.\u2019s top-secret budget in 2013 for the AT&T partnership was more than twice that of the next-largest such program, according to the documents. The company installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, far more than its similarly sized competitor, Verizon. And its engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the eavesdropping agency.<\/p>\n

One document reminds N.S.A. officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, noting, \u201cThis is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The documents, provided by the former agency contractor Edward J. Snowden, were jointly reviewed by The New York Times and ProPublica. The N.S.A., AT&T and Verizon declined to discuss the findings from the files. \u201cWe don\u2019t comment on matters of national security,\u201d an AT&T spokesman said.<\/p>\n

It is not clear if the programs still operate in the same way today. Since the Snowden revelations set off a global debate over surveillance two years ago, some Silicon Valley technology companies have expressed anger at what they characterize as N.S.A. intrusions and have rolled out new encryption to thwart them. The telecommunications companies have been quieter, though Verizon unsuccessfully challenged a court order for bulk phone records in 2014.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the government has been fighting in court to keep the identities of its telecom partners hidden. In a recent case, a group of AT&T customers claimed that the N.S.A.\u2019s tapping of the Internet violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. This year, a federal judge dismissed key portions of the lawsuit after the Obama administration argued that public discussion of its telecom surveillance efforts would reveal state secrets, damaging national security.<\/p>\n

The N.S.A. documents do not identify AT&T or other companies by name. Instead, they refer to corporate partnerships run by the agency\u2019s Special Source Operations division using code names. The division is responsible for more than 80 percent of the information the N.S.A. collects, one document states.<\/p>\n

Fairview is one of its oldest programs. It began in 1985, the year after antitrust regulators broke up the Ma Bell telephone monopoly and its long-distance division became AT&T Communications. An analysis of the Fairview documents by The Times and ProPublica reveals a constellation of evidence that points to AT&T as that program\u2019s partner. Several former intelligence officials confirmed that finding.<\/p>\n

A Fairview fiber-optic cable, damaged in the 2011 earthquake in Japan, was repaired on the same date as a Japanese-American cable operated by AT&T. Fairview documents use technical jargon specific to AT&T. And in 2012, the Fairview program carried out the court order for surveillance on the Internet line, which AT&T provides, serving the United Nations headquarters. (N.S.A. spying on United Nations diplomats has previously<\/a> been<\/a> reported<\/a>, but not the court order or AT&T\u2019s involvement. In October 2013, the United States told the United Nations<\/a> that it would not monitor its communications.)<\/p>\n

The documents also show that another program, code-named Stormbrew, has included Verizon and the former MCI, which Verizon purchased in 2006. One describes a Stormbrew cable landing that is identifiable as one that Verizon operates. Another names a contact person whose LinkedIn profile says he is a longtime Verizon employee with a top-secret clearance.<\/p>\n

\"AT&T\u2019s<\/a>

AT&T\u2019s cable station in Point Arena, California. NSA collection at this site was temporarily disrupted after the 2011 Japanese earthquake damaged the undersea cable. (Henrik Moltke for ProPublica)<\/p><\/div>\n

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, AT&T and MCI were instrumental in the Bush administration\u2019s warrantless wiretapping programs, according to a draft report by the N.S.A.\u2019s inspector general. The report, disclosed by Mr. Snowden and previously published by The Guardian<\/a>, does not identify the companies by name but describes their market share in numbers that correspond to those two businesses, according to Federal Communications Commission reports.<\/p>\n

AT&T began turning over emails and phone calls \u201cwithin days\u201d after the warrantless surveillance began in October 2001, the report indicated. By contrast, the other company did not start until February 2002, the draft report said.<\/p>\n

In September 2003, according to the previously undisclosed N.S.A. documents, AT&T was the first partner to turn on a new collection capability that the N.S.A. said amounted to a \u201c\u00a0\u2018live\u2019 presence on the global net.\u201d In one of its first months of operation, the Fairview program forwarded to the agency 400 billion Internet metadata records \u2014 which include who contacted whom and other details, but not what they said \u2014 and was \u201cforwarding more than one million emails a day to the keyword selection system\u201d at the agency\u2019s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. Stormbrew was still gearing up to use the new technology, which appeared to process foreign-to-foreign traffic separate from the post-9\/11 program.<\/p>\n

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the N.S.A. after \u201ca push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9\/11,\u201d according to an internal agency newsletter. This revelation is striking because after Mr. Snowden disclosed the program of collecting the records of Americans\u2019 phone calls, intelligence officials told reporters that, for technical reasons, it consisted mostly of landline phone records.<\/p>\n

That year, one slide presentation shows, the N.S.A. spent $188.9 million on the Fairview program, twice the amount spent on Stormbrew, its second-largest corporate program.<\/p>\n

After The Times disclosed the Bush administration\u2019s warrantless wiretapping program in December 2005, plaintiffs began trying to sue AT&T and the N.S.A. In a 2006 lawsuit, a retired AT&T technician named Mark Klein claimed that three years earlier, he had seen a secret room in a company building in San Francisco where the N.S.A. had installed equipment.<\/p>\n

Mr. Klein claimed that AT&T was providing the N.S.A. with access to Internet traffic that AT&T transmits for other telecom companies. Such cooperative arrangements, known in the industry as \u201cpeering,\u201d mean that communications from customers of other companies could end up on AT&T\u2019s network.<\/p>\n

After Congress passed a 2008 law legalizing the Bush program and immunizing the telecom companies for their cooperation with it, that lawsuit was thrown out. But the newly disclosed documents show that AT&T has provided access to peering traffic from other companies\u2019 networks.<\/p>\n

AT&T\u2019s \u201ccorporate relationships provide unique accesses to other telecoms and I.S.P.s,\u201d or Internet service providers, one 2013 N.S.A. document states.<\/p>\n

Because of the way the Internet works, intercepting a targeted person\u2019s email requires copying pieces of many other people\u2019s emails, too, and sifting through those pieces. Plaintiffs have been trying without success to get courts to address whether copying and sifting pieces of all those emails violates the Fourth Amendment.<\/p>\n

Many privacy advocates have suspected that AT&T was giving the N.S.A. a copy of all Internet data to sift for itself. But one 2012 presentation says the spy agency does not \u201ctypically\u201d have \u201cdirect access\u201d to telecoms\u2019 hubs. Instead, the telecoms have done the sifting and forwarded messages the government believes it may legally collect.<\/p>\n

\u201cCorporate sites are often controlled by the partner, who filters the communications before sending to N.S.A.,\u201d according to the presentation. This system sometimes leads to \u201cdelays\u201d when the government sends new instructions, it added.<\/p>\n

The companies\u2019 sorting of data has allowed the N.S.A. to bring different surveillance powers to bear. Targeting someone on American soil requires a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act<\/a>. When a foreigner abroad is communicating with an American, that law permits\u00a0the government to target that foreigner without a warrant. When foreigners are messaging other foreigners, \u00a0that law does not apply and\u00a0the government can collect such emails in bulk without targeting anyone.<\/p>\n

AT&T\u2019s provision of foreign-to-foreign traffic has been particularly important to the N.S.A. because large amounts of the world\u2019s Internet communications travel across American cables. AT&T provided access to the contents of transiting email traffic for years before Verizon began doing so in March 2013, the documents show. They say AT&T gave the N.S.A. access to \u201cmassive amounts of data,\u201d and by 2013 the program was processing 60 million foreign-to-foreign emails a day.<\/p>\n

Because domestic wiretapping laws do not cover foreign-to-foreign emails, the companies have provided them voluntarily, not in response to court orders, intelligence officials said. But it is not clear whether that remains the case after the post-Snowden upheavals.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person\u2019s life is in danger and time is of the essence,\u201d Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman, said. He declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n

***************<\/p>\n

Timeline: NSA and AT&T\u2019s Close Relationship through the\u00a0Years<\/em><\/h3>\n

1984<\/em><\/h4>\n

The \u201cMa Bell\u201d phone monopoly breaks up into regional \u201cBaby Bells\u201d and a long-distance company that retains the AT&T name and enters the computer business.<\/em><\/p>\n

1985<\/em><\/h4>\n

NSA launches Fairview program partnership with a single partner, AT&T, according to internal documents<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

1985<\/em><\/h4>\n

AT&T\u2019s first big contract as a standalone company is a nearly $1 billion agreement to provide computers and services to the National Security Agency, according to news reports<\/a> at the time.<\/em><\/p>\n

2001<\/em><\/h4>\n

In the days after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks, Congress passes the Patriot Act. President Geroge W. Bush also secretly authorizes a warrantless wiretapping program known as Stellar Wind. AT&T is the first company to start turning over records under both programs, according to internal documents<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

2003<\/em><\/h4>\n

AT&T is forwarding more than 1 million emails per day and 400 million Internet metadata records a month to the NSA, according to internal documents<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

2003\u20132006<\/em><\/h4>\n

For three years, AT&T provides the FBI with illegal \u2018sneak peeks\u2019 at the calling records for communities of hundreds of people without legally valid requests for the information, according to congressional testimony<\/a> by FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni. Verizon told Congress<\/a> it did not provide similar community information.<\/em><\/p>\n

2005<\/em><\/h4>\n

The New York Times reveals<\/a> President Bush\u2019s warrantless wiretapping program.<\/em><\/p>\n

2006<\/em><\/h4>\n

Former AT&T engineer Mark Klein publicly reveals<\/a> in a lawsuit a secret room in AT&T\u2019s San Francisco office that he says siphons traffic to the NSA. <\/em><\/p>\n

2008<\/em><\/h4>\n

Congress passes the FISA Amendments Act<\/a>, legalizing portions of warrantless wiretapping and granting legal immunity to AT&T and other telecommunications companyies for their participation in it.<\/em><\/p>\n

2009<\/em><\/h4>\n

9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismisses<\/a> the case based on Klein\u2019s allegations, citing the immunity granted to telecommunications companies by Congress.<\/em><\/p>\n

2011<\/em><\/h4>\n

AT&T starts delivering 1.1 billion of its customers\u2019 cellphone calling records per day to the NSA, under the Patriot Act business records provision, according to internal documents<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

2013<\/em><\/h4>\n

Edward Snowden passes journalists a trove of NSA documents that reveal the vast scope of NSA spying.<\/em><\/p>\n

2015<\/em><\/h4>\n

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismisses key portions of another constitutional challenge<\/a> to AT&T\u2019s fiber taps, after the government argued that any discussion of its collaborations with telecom companies was a state secret.<\/em><\/p>\n

*****************<\/em><\/p>\n

Newly Disclosed N.S.A. Files Detail Partnerships with AT&T and Verizon<\/a> – <\/em>Aug 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0These National Security Agency documents shed new light on the agency\u2019s relationship through the years with American telecommunications companies. They show how the agency\u2019s partnership with AT&T has been particularly important, enabling it to conduct surveillance, under several different legal rules, of international and foreign-to-foreign Internet communications that passed through network hubs on American soil. The documents come from the archive provided by the former intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden. The files do not identify the firms by name, but instead refer to the Fairview and Stormbrew programs, An analysis by The New York Times and ProPublica found a constellation of evidence that AT&T was the Fairview partner and Verizon was part of the Stormbrew program. The documents range from 2003 to 2013; it is not clear whether the arrangements are the same today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Key\u00a0Documents:\"nsa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n