FAIRVIEW is a secret program under which the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

cooperates with the American telecommunications company

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

in order to collect phone, internet and e-mail data mainly of foreign countries' citizens at major cable landing stations and switching stations inside the United States. The FAIRVIEW program started in 1985, one year after the

Bell breakup The Bell System held a virtual monopoly over telephony infrastructure in the United States since the early 20th century until January 8, 1982. This divestiture of the Bell Operating Companies was initiated in 1974 when the United States Departme ...

.New York Times
AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale
& Pro Publica
NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’
August 15, 2015. In 2010, the NSA had access to these AT&T facilities: * 8 internet peering points * 26

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

router facilities * 1 VoIP hub router facility (with 30 planned) * 9 submarine

cable landing point A cable landing point is the location where a Submarine cable, submarine or other underwater cable makes landfall. The term is most often used for the landfall points of submarine communications cable, submarine telecommunications cables and subm ...

s (with 7 planned) * 16

4ESS The No. 4 Electronic Switching System (4ESS) is a class 4 telephone electronic switching system that was the first digital electronic toll switch introduced by Western Electric for long-distance switching. It was introduced in Chicago in January ...

circuit switching stations Except for the VoIP facilities, most are along U.S. borders. In 2011, NSA spent $188.9 million on the program, which was twice as much as on its second-largest program, STORMBREW. In 2013, whistleblower

Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. Born in 1983 in Elizabeth ...

revealed that the NSA was harvesting the telephone

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

and text messages from over a billion subscribers in China; no precise program name was reported at the time. Several weeks later,

Glenn Greenwald Glenn Edward Greenwald (born March 6, 1967) is an American journalist, author, and former lawyer. In 1996, Greenwald founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment to the United States Constitution, First Amendment litigation. He began blo ...

wrote in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' about FAIRVIEW: ''"''The NSA partners with a large US telecommunications company" that "partners with telecoms in the foreign countries,

hich Ij () is a village in Golabar Rural District of the Central District in Ijrud County, Zanjan province, Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq ...

then allow the US company access to those countries' telecommunications systems, and that access is then exploited to direct traffic to the NSA's repositories." Documents provided by Snowden said the NSA had collected 2.3 billion separate pieces of data from Brazilian users in January 2013. US-990 Fairview Map - crop

In 2013, Brazilian television showed a map of FAIRVIEW with markers all over the United States, but without a legend that explained what they stood for. AT&T was first identified as FAIRVIEW's "key corporate partner" in 2013, by the ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

,'' quoting NSA historian Matthew Aid. This was confirmed in 2015 by a joint report by ''

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit investigative journalism organization based in New York City. ProPublica's investigations are conducted by its staff of full-time reporters, and the resulting stories are distributed to ne ...

'' and the ''New York Times'', based upon NSA documents that describe the company as "highly collaborative" and praise the company's "extreme willingness to help".New York Times
AT&T Helped U.S. Spy on Internet on a Vast Scale
& Pro Publica
NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’
August 15, 2015.

Eight peering points

The following AT&T facilities, each broadly resembling the windowless skyscraper 33 Thomas Street in Downtown Manhattan, have been alleged to host FAIRVIEW technology for peering points: *

Room 641A Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, as part of an American mass surveillance program. The facility commenced operations in 2003 and its purpose was publicly revealed ...

in 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CAJewel v. NSA April 2019 ruling
/ref> * 811 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY *1122 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA *10 South Canal Street, Chicago, IL *4211 Bryan Street, Dallas, TX * AT&T Switching Center, 420 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA *51 Peachtree Center Avenue, Atlanta, GA *30 E Street Southwest, Washington, DC

Legal authorities

Various legal authorities authorize the collection of data under the FAIRVIEW program:

FISA The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA, , ) is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil.

, which requires individual warrants from the FISA Court, section 702 FAA for when one end of the communications is foreign, and the Transit Authority for when both ends of a communication are foreign. Under the FAIRVIEW program, AT&T provided the NSA with domestic telephone metadata in bulk, which was authorized under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act. First this was from landline connections, but in 2011, AT&T also started handing over cell phone metadata: 1.1 billion pieces a day.

Media related to FAIRVIEW

File:Transit authority (3) -crop.jpg, Upstream: Transit Authority File:Transit authority map -Crop.jpg, Upstream: Map of Transit Authority File:Unique aspects-crop.jpg, Upstream: Unique Aspects File:US-990 Fairview - crop.jpg, FAIRVIEW: Summary File:Help us help you- straight.jpg, "B-reel" 2nd FAIRVIEW presentation: help us help you File:Where SSO is accessing your target (3).jpg, 2nd FAIRVIEW presentation: Where SS0 is accessing your target

External links

NSA Spying Relies on AT&T’s ‘Extreme Willingness to Help’

References

{{National Security Agency 2013 scandals Intelligence agency programmes revealed by Edward Snowden Counterterrorism in the United States Human rights in the United States Mass surveillance National Security Agency Obama administration controversies Privacy in the United States Privacy of telecommunications Surveillance scandals United States national security policy War on terror