NSA??

As usual when the conspiracy scent is sniffed... lots of people point the finger at the NSA, CIA, MI5, KGB etc...

Now KGB, MI5 (maybe) or another counties agencies I could believe... but NSA is pretty ridiculous.. they already have this data without having to go to all the hassle of getting people to physically get into the exchanges.

This is mobile phone traffic we are talking about. Mobile phones put this data on the air in the form of RF energy... something the NSA and sister agencies have had satalites and ground monitoring stations listening into for decades. And yes the sats are almost certainly sensitive enough to pickup spill from devices as weak as mobile phones. Yes there is some mild encryption in place, but for an agency that has dedicated the last few decades to cracking codes used by governments its hardly going to be a challange. >80)