Six months
before 9/11 the NSA instituted a program to record and store data by call subscribers.
It looks like AT&T was approached by the NSA to build a network operations center:
Pioneer Groundbreaker
The NSA initiative, code-named ``Pioneer Groundbreaker,'' asked AT&T unit AT&T Solutions to build exclusively for NSA use a network operations center which duplicated AT&T's Bedminster, New Jersey facility, the court papers claimed. That plan was abandoned in favor of the NSA acquiring the monitoring technology itself, plaintiffs' lawyers Bruce Afran said.
This places the statement by the Bush administration that the spying only became necessary after 9/11 into the realm of fiction.
Read the Fully Story at Bloomberg.
Can't say that I'm surprised. What else are we going to find out? Puts me into the MIHOP camp, you know what I mean?