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June 25, 2018 04:47 pm

Report Reveals 8 AT&T Buildings Across the US, Hidden in Plain Sight, That Are Central To One of NSA's Most Controversial Internet Surveillance Programs

News outlet The Intercept on Monday published a report that reveals eight AT&T-owned locations: two in California, one in Washington, another in Washington, D.C., one in New York, one in Texas, one in Illinois, and one in Georgia, that serve as backbone or "peering" facilities that the NSA has secretly been using for eavesdropping purposes. Spokespeople of AT&T, which refers to the aforementioned peering sites as "Service Node Routing Complexes", and NSA, could neither confirm or deny the report's findings. From the report: The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company's "extreme willingness to help." It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T's customers. According to the NSA's documents, it values AT&T not only because it "has access to information that transits the nation," but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T's massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies. [...] While network operators would usually prefer to send data through their own networks, often a more direct and cost-efficient path is provided by other providers' infrastructure. If one network in a specific area of the country is overloaded with data traffic, another operator with capacity to spare can sell or exchange bandwidth, reducing the strain on the congested region. This exchange of traffic is called "peering" and is an essential feature of the internet. Because of AT&T's position as one of the U.S.'s leading telecommunications companies, it has a large network that is frequently used by other providers to transport their customers' data. Companies that "peer" with AT&T include the American telecommunications giants Sprint, Cogent Communications, and Level 3, as well as foreign companies such as Sweden's Telia, India's Tata Communications, Italy's Telecom Italia, and Germany's Deutsche Telekom.

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