Internet Monitoring
On May 22, 2006, it was revealed by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and Wired magazine that the program involved the NSA setting up splitters to the routing cores of many telecoms companies and to major Internet traffic hubs. These provided a direct connection via an alleged "black room" known as Room 641A. This room allows most U.S. telecoms communications and Internet traffic to be redirected to the NSA. The NSA used them to eavesdrop and order police investigations of tens of thousands of ordinary Americans without judicial warrants.
According to a security consultant who worked on the program, "What the companies are doing is worse than turning over records ... they’re providing total access to all the data", and a former senior intelligence official said, "This is not about getting a cardboard box of monthly phone bills in alphabetical order ... the N.S.A. is getting real-time actionable intelligence."
On June 30, 2006 USA Today printed a partial retraction about its controversial article the prior month saying: "... USA TODAY also spoke again with the sources who had originally provided information about the scope and contents of the domestic calls database. All said the published report accurately reflected their knowledge and understanding of the NSA program, but none could document a contractual relationship between BellSouth or Verizon and the NSA, or that the companies turned over bulk calling records to the NSA. Based on its reporting after the May 11 article, USA TODAY has now concluded that while the NSA has built a massive domestic calls record database involving the domestic call records of telecommunications companies, the newspaper cannot confirm that BellSouth or Verizon contracted with the NSA to provide bulk calling records to that database ..."
Read more about this topic: NSA Call Database