As well as the billions of emails that pass through AT&T’s servers, the NSA also used its relationship with the carrier to tap the United Nations building, the documents reveal.

The documents further suggest that the AT&T Inc gave the NSA access to billions of emails landing in the domestic networks.

Edward Snowden, the controversial figure responsible for leaking information regarding the NSA’s covert surveillance program, has released new information regarding the telecommunications corporation AT&T.

The report says that despite the details contained in the documents, it remains unclear whether or not these AT&T programs are still in effect today. Read the full New York Times report here.

ProPublica and the New York Times were apparently able to link Fairview to AT&T through a careful examination of documents disclosed by Snowden, matching up terminology and events with pubic records. The difference is that AT&T has been disproportionately involved in the NSA’s intelligence gathering. Neither the NSA nor AT&T have specifically commented on the joint report, but an AT&T spokesman did tell the outlets “We don’t comment on matters of national security”. Recently, some AT&T customers claimed NSA’s internet tapping violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.

The relationship between the two organizations was so important to the NSA that a memo even warned NSA employees that they should be extra polite when meeting and dealing with their AT&T counterparts. Telecommunications giant Verizon (referred to within the framework of a program called STORMBREW) collects data from eight interconnected sites across the continental US.

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the NSA after “a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11″, according to an internal agency newsletter cited by the Times.

Connections were made between AT&T and Fairview in the aftermath of Japan’s 2011 quake.

NSA protocols call for agents to exercise maximum courtesy in their dealings with the corporations, on the grounds that US intelligence ties to the corporations constitute “a partnership, not a contractual relationship”. The leaks by Snowden describe how AT&T collaborated with NSA, enabling the agency to conduct surveillance, under various legal rules, of worldwide and foreign-to-foreign Internet communications that passed through network hubs in the United States.