I don't think that's what people thought at the time; see https://www.theverge.c...

I don't think that's what people thought at the time; see https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/6/5072924/google-engineers-... for something more external. There really was a lot of surprise.

The 2006 lawsuit was about AT&T cooperating with the NSA to facilitate tapping their customers, quite different from the NSA surreptitiously digging up and tapping private fiber.