‘Highly collaborative’: Secret documents reveal how closely US spies worked with telecom giants to monitor Internet traffic

Telecommunications powerhouse AT&T has provided extensive assistance to the U.S. National Security Agency as the spy agency conducts surveillance on huge volumes of Internet traffic passing through the United States, according to newly disclosed NSA documents.

The New York Times reported that the company gave technical assistance to the NSA in carrying out a secret court order allowing wiretapping of all Internet communications at the headquarters of the United Nations, an AT&T customer.

The documents date from 2003 to 2013 and were provided by fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the Times reported.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, the newspaper reported, the documents show that the government’s relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help,” the newspaper reported.

The documents describe how the NSA’s working relationship with AT&T has been particularly important, enabling the agency to conduct surveillance, under various legal rules, of international and foreign-to-foreign Internet communications that passed through network hubs in the United States.

AT&T installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its U.S. Internet hubs, far more than competitor Verizon Communications Inc, the Times reported. AT&T engineers also were the first to use new surveillance technologies invented by the NSA.