You can read about PRISM, Upstream, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, NSA Section 215 (PATRIOT Act) in a lot of places. But essentially they collected all call records and tapped the Internet backbone and stored as much traffic as they could. It’s not all automatic but it’s overly streamlined given the promises of court orders. Which were rubber stamped.
You can read about PRISM, Upstream, FAIRVIEW, STORMBREW, NSA Section 215 (PATRIOT Act) in a lot of places. But essentially they collected all call records and tapped the Internet backbone and stored as much traffic as they could. It’s not all automatic but it’s overly streamlined given the promises of court orders. Which were rubber stamped.