Documents reportedly reveal details behind AT&T-NSA partnership

AT&T in 2003 reportedly led the way on a new collection capability that the National Security Agency said amounted to a “’live’ presence on the global net” and would forward 400 billion Internet metadata records in one of its first months of operation.

The New York Times reported the Fairview program was forwarding more than 1 million emails per day to the agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Meanwhile, the Stormbrew program, linked to Verizon and the former MCI company, was still gearing up to use the new technology, which appeared to process foreign-to-foreign traffic.

According to an internal agency newsletter cited by the newspaper, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the NSA in 2011, after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11.” Intelligence officials told reporters in the past that the effort consisted mostly of landline phone records, the Times reported.

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