It seems the telecom industry and the NSA. have been
working hand in glove lately:
The New York Times on Saturday reported that the NSA has been monitoring "large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States" -- a larger volume than previously indicated by the administration.
"NSA has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain back-door access to streams of domestic and international communications," the newspaper added.
(The original New York Times article is here, although it will be behind a TimesSelect firewall soon.)
In fact, the ACLU has been concerned by the ongoing "privatization" of our spying activities for a few years:
In a report released this week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) describes what it calls a growing "surveillance-industrial complex" in which the US government is increasingly relying on the private sector to collect personal information about US citizens and residents.
In response to its findings, the ACLU is embarking on a nationwide grassroots campaign to put pressure on private companies that readily collude with government agencies in violation of people's privacy.
"The amount of direct surveillance that government security agencies can conduct, and the number of people they can hire, will always be limited," said report author Jay Stanley in a press statement. Stanley is the Communications Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program. "But leveraging the private sector," he continued, "vastly expands the government's capacity to invade our lives."
The report, entitled "The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society," details the variety of ways government agencies go about enlisting the help of private individuals and businesses in efforts to monitor Americans' behavior.
According to the report, federal and state governments have instituted a variety of programs to encourage individuals to monitor their neighbors and coworkers. Although the most publicized such program, Operation TIPS, was discarded by Congress due to privacy concerns raised at the grassroots level, the ACLU says many similar programs, including elements of the TIPS program, are employed nationwide.
Some more background on domestic spying here and here, and some background on ESCHELON here.
This type of "public-private partnership" between the US intelligence community and private companies has been going on for a long time, for example with project SHAMROCK. And here's an old article from Bill Berkowitz on the similiar, now-defunct TIPS program that Bush had envisioned as a way to outsource spying, this time to private citizens.