(2012) In the mid-2000s, two Israeli spy companies (Narus and Verint) were caught in the centre of a huge scandal involving the wiretapping of virtually all US phone and internet messages. Their mass surveillance services were used by America’s two largest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon. (See AT&T pp.7-8, and Verizon in table, “CPP Investments,” p.53.)
These telecom giants, which together control 80% of the US market, were turning over all of their customers’ internet communications and phone call records to the US National Secu-
rity Agency (NSA). On hundreds of occasions, these data transfers were done without legal warrants or court orders.

This warrantless wiretapping operation was a gargantuan task requiring the collection, analysis and transfer of data relating to billions of messages per day. To accomplish this, AT&T employed the services of an Israeli spy firm called
Narus, while Verizon used a different Israeli spy company, Verint Systems.