Collaboration 2 Step

The Best coverage worldwide, complete with evocative graphics, touts AT&T's end to end connectivity to us 24/7 but lost in the shadows, the tagline inadvertently points to something all together different, AT&T's deep connect to it's erstwhile partner, the NSA, a fact not known to the public at large, until now.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY’S 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.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the 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.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the NSA 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.

The NSA’s 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.

It gets better.

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.

Seen below is a diagram showing a small part of just how sophisticated the network data flow from AT&T to the NSA truly was, something not denied by either party thanks to the accuracy of the data collected when Edwin Snowden blew the whistle on these guys.

The question to ask now is, is the connect still on? Only FISA knows, for sure.

Seen below is the art used to support the Best tagline. If nothing else, it's creative as hell.