AT&T reportedly helped the NSA spy on internet traffic

The National Security Agency has been able to spy on a massive amount of internet traffic due to a partnership with AT&T dating back to 1985, ProPublica and The New York Times reported Saturday based on documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

It's been reported before that telecommunications companies cooperated with the NSA, but new documents specifically highlight AT&T's "extreme willingness to help."

When George W. Bush passed the Patriot Act and also secretly started a warrantless wiretapping programming in 2001, AT&T was the first company to start turning over records. The company also started forwarding one billion emails per day and hundreds of millions of internet metadata records per month.

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