“Secret cooperation with the telecom industry is only one method the NSA [National Security Agency] uses to penetrate the Internet and fiber-optic communications. Long before the warrantless eavesdropping program was inaugurated following the 9/11 attacks, the agency was covertly tapping into both. This was revealed in a highly classified closed-door discussion at the NSA on September 30, 1999, between the NSA deputy director for services Terry Thompson and members of the agency’s technical workforce. ‘The projections that we made five, six, eight years ago,’ said Thompson in a videotape of the meeting obtained by the author [James Bamford], ‘about the increasing volumes of collection and what that’s going to mean for our analysts have all come true, thanks in large part to the work that you all and others have done. We’re much further ahead now in terms of being able to access and collect [Internet] network data, fiber optics, cellular data, all the different modalities of communications that we are targeting.’ ”
– James Bamford, The Shadow Factory, Page 195