9) AT&T's black ops

9) AT&T's black ops

In 2006, a former AT&T employee revealed what many people had suspected for a long time: the Bush administration was using the Web to spy on Americans.

AT&T had set up a secret room at its San Francisco facilities where the government--without obtaining a search warrant--collected and monitored Internet traffic belonging to individual Americans.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against AT&T (AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is pictured sitting) and in 2008 filed a complaint against U.S. President George Bush (top). Congress later passed a bill that exempted companies like AT&T from these kinds of lawsuits. EFF says it will continue to fight to stop the National Security Agency's "massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications."