Last month a string of highly classified documents were leaked by former CIA technical analyst Edward Snowden. Those documents revealed that the UK’s GCHQ was apparently tapping in to undersea fiber optic cables that go through the country for collecting data. At that time it was not known if any telecommunication companies were aiding the program, which is known as Tempora. According to German newspaper Süddeutsche, which claims to have received documents from none other than Edward Snowden, Verizon Wireless allegedly aided the GCHQ’s Tempora program.
Apart from Verizon, four small providers, BT and Vodafone have also been named in the report. The documents are said to be from 2009. Previous information leaked about Tempora reveals that the program is capable of intercepting some 600 million “telephone events” daily, apart from collecting petabytes of internet data. The companies mentioned in the report have declined to comment on this situation. Verizon is one of the biggest providers in the U.S., one can only imagine what it customers would think knowing that their provider is allegedly aiding UK’s eavesdropping efforts. The report claims that data collected through Tempora is shared between GCHQ and US’s very own National Security Agency.
Filed in . Read more about Edward Snowden, Nsa and Verizon Wireless.