Historical: Room 641A at AT&T in the US.

Everyone said this about global surveillance before Snowden and yet. I don't see the value in questioning if this is true or not, rather I think we should assume it's true and act as such, isn't that what modern security is about? (see: HTTPS/DNSSEC/DoH etc)

I frankly wouldn't be surprised if it's actually happening.

I inferred that they were speculating, not that they had a smoking gun piece of evidence. The word "probably" is what tipped me off, ymmv.