ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Lee Smith at Real Clear Investigations has a lengthy analysis of the early contacts with Trump campaign official prior to the official launch of the FBI’s counterintelligence probe known as “Crossfire Hurricane.”
How extensive the FBI or other US intelligence/law enforcement agencies’ contacts with Trump campaign advisers were prior to the July 31, 2016 start date for the official investigation has been a great mystery for journalists and congressmen willing to ask.
Congressman Devin Nunes, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has been trying to get to the bottom of these contacts and the exact origin of the FBI probe for several months and has still been met with stonewalling from the Justice Department.
Smith has detailed as many as seven contacts with Trump campaign figures that have been made public:

Before the FBI began investigating the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia in an operation code-named “Crossfire Hurricane,” there were at least seven different instances when campaign advisers were approached with Russia-related offers. Most of those contacts — including Donald Trump Jr.’s much-publicized meeting with a Russian lawyer and others in June 2016 — offered the prospect of information damaging to Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Two of these approaches were made by one U.S. government informant already publicly identified as such, Stefan Halper. Another was made by a man who swore in court that he had worked as an FBI informant. Two others were made by figures associated with Western intelligence agencies. Another two approaches included political operatives, one foreign, with ties to the Clintons.

That’s a lot of interactions with the Trump campaign at the hands of US intel affiliates. All of them, coincidentally, had the same offer: Dirt on Hillary from the Russians.
Smith’s reporting suggests that’s not a coincidence:

But Mark Wauck, a former FBI agent with experience in such tactics, sees an effort at entrapment. “What appear to have been repeated attempts to implicate the Trump campaign, in some sort of quid pro quo arrangement with Russians who claimed to have ‘dirt’ on Hillary,” Wauck told RealClearInvestigations, “look like efforts to manufacture evidence against members of the Trump campaign or create pretexts to investigate it.”
At the same time, in early spring, the Clinton campaign commissioned, through its law firm,  the Washington, D.C.-based communications firm Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. The result was the infamous 35-page dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.

And we know that dossier was used to justify at least one FISA surveillance warrant against one fo the Trump figures targeted by these initial contacts, Carter Page.,
As of this date, there has been no public evidence presented to suggest that there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government for the purpose of meddling or obstructing in the 2016 presidential election. Furthermore, the dossier that is at the center of so much of the justification of the initial investigation as well as Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel appointment has been labeled “salacious and unverified” by none other than former FBI Director James Comey and no evidence has been presented to dispute that claim.
Smith’s reporting is detailed and thorough and the entire article deserves your attention.
Two key take aways:

• The efforts to bait the Trump camp into accepting some kind of “dirt” on Hillary from the Russians sure smells like entrapment.
• And, despite all the efforts, the only contact that developed into anything was the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. which was coordinated by a figure connected with Fusion GPS, the same company who assembled the bogus Steele dossier. And that meeting, it appears, was a non-event.

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The National Security Agency is using internet data processing centers run by telecommunications powerhouse AT&T to spy on American and foreign citizens, a new investigation claims.

The Intercept has identified eight AT&T facilities across the United States which are allegedly being used by the NSA to monitor internet users’ emails, social media posts and internet browsing.

The centers are known as ‘peering’ facilities’ and processes data from both AT&T customers and those of other U.S. internet providers, as well as telecoms companies fromSweden, India, Germany and Italy.

‘It’s eye-opening and ominous the extent to which this is happening right here on American soil,’ said Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice told The Intercept.

‘It puts a face on surveillance that we could never think of before in terms of actual buildings and actual facilities in our own cities, in our own backyards.’

All eight buildings, in cities such as Los Angeles, NYC, Seattle and Washington DC, have several things in common, as well as being AT&T facilities.

They are tall and imposing structures with few or blacked out windows, and – either seemingly or confirmed to be – built to withstand a nuclear attack.

The buildings are located on 10 South Canal Street in Chicago, 1122 3rd Avenue in Seattle, 811 10th Avenue in New York City, 30 E Street Southwest in Washington DC, 51 Peachtree Center Avenue in Atlanta, 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco, 4211 Bryan Street in Dallas and 420 South Grand Avenue in Los Angeles.

By tapping into wires in these ‘peering’ facilities, the NSA can collect ‘not only AT&T’s data, they get all the data that’s interchanged between AT&T’s network and other companies,’ according to Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who worked with the company for 22 years, told The Intercept.

‘The peering links, by the nature of the connections, are liable to carry everybody’s traffic at one point or another during the day, or the week, or the year,’ he added.

The Intercept interviewed several former AT&T employees who confirmed the locations of the eight ‘peering sites’ used by the NSA.

The NSA would neither confirm nor deny the claims, while AT&T told The Intercept that they were required by law to provide the authorities with information to certain extents.

The telecoms giant’s close relationship with the NSA was first revealed by the New York Times in 2015, thanks to documents leaked by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

The company helped the spy agency in a broad range of classified activities, the documents revealed.

They describe how the NSA’s working relationship with AT&T had enabled the agency to conduct surveillance, under various legal rules, of international and foreign-to-foreign internet communications that passed through network hubs in the United States.