Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system’s main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

Screw the law, says the government. Screw the customers’s data and privacy rights, say the telecom companies.

Happy holidays to you, too.