A December 24, 2005, article in The New York Times “reported that ‘the NSA [National Security Agency] has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications.’ According to the article, this vast pipeline of raw telephone and e-mail data was being systematically combed by NSA analysts using the agency’s data-mining software ‘in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects.’ ”
– Matthew M. Aid, The Secret Sentry, Pages 292-293