Leaked documents shows NSA and AT&T worked together in online surveillance

The telecommunications company AT&T has been helping the NSA to spy on its networks, gaining access to people's emails and contacts for over 10 years.

The New York Times revealed the documents indicating the strong ties between NSA and AT&T. The leaked information specified that AT&T worked with NSA from 2003 to 2013. The National Security Agency has been monitoring internet traffic in the United States and other foreign countries, gaining access to emails sent through AT&T's network.

The partnership is aimed to authorize access to high-powered international fiber optic cables all over the world.

In the evidence divulged by Edward Snowden, facts show that the NSA had arranged a partnership with Verizon and AT&T, but the AT&T bond is more beneficial. AT&T added surveillance devices to 17 locations using them as a testing hub for studying new procedures and emerging technologies.

It is said that AT&T also cooperates with other telecom companies outside the country to access their system. Accordingly, NSA teamed up with AT&T to deploy direct traffic to NSA's storage facilities.

One surveillance program highlighted was Fairview. According to Domestic Surveillance Directorate, Fairview is one of the three programs used by NSA to process data flow on the Internet. Fairview is NSA's confidential surveillance program which collects email, contacts and internet data from people's devices in and out of the country.

It states in a document provided by ProPublica, a technical discussion was held to overview Fairview's access and collection infrastructure including the use of its data flows to government agencies.

Right now, it is still unclear if there are still on-going transactions between the government agency and the telecom company, but as the document reads, they also talked about the future cyber plans of the partnership, appreciating AT&T's 'highly collaborative nature' granting them the access and insights.

NSA had spent $232.2M on the Fairview program alone in 2010 and $188.9M in 2011. Both organizations declined to comment about this issue.