AT&T: The NSA's Biggest Corporate Sponsor and Partner

New revelations about the National Security Agency show that while it has been long established internet and telecoms companies like Google and Verizon had helped the U.S.government to violate the constitutional rights of hundreds of millions of Americans, no company seems to have aided domestic spying more than AT&T.

The New York Times reports that through its relationship with AT&T, the NSA was able to collect billions of emails, including all the communications of the United Nations, which uses AT&T for its internet services. The documents the revelations are based on cover a 10-year period from 2003-2013 and show that the company even gave the NSA technical assistance, meaning its own employees participated in the spying.

The relationship between the two organizations was so important to the NSA that a memo even warned NSA employees that they should be extra polite when meeting and dealing with their AT&T counterparts.

AT&T is not explicitly named in the documents, but reporting by the Times and ProPublica, a public policy investigation organization, confirmed AT&T as the company behind an NSA program called Fairview. This reporting was confirmed to both organizations by former members of the intelligence community.

For example, much of the technical language used in the documents is specific to AT&T, and a Fairview fiber optic cable damaged after the devastating 2011 Japanese earthquake was repaired on the same day as a cable operated by AT&T.

The documents also showed that when the Bush Administration began warrantless surveillance on Americans after September 11, 2001, AT&T was the most eager to hand customer data to the government. AT&T gave the government customer data in October 2001, while the other major telecoms waited until February 2002.