The rise of the internet and accompanying technological growth revolutionized the systems of surveillance already in place. Surveillance shifted away from being mostly human-focused spying to data-driven bulk collections. The NSA realized that this new approach would require the addition of new resources to their toolkit and began to adopt a new strategy to acquire the most data possible.

The NSA needed the ability to gather enormous amounts of data with relatively little effort, and this gave rise to programs such as PRISM, FAIRVIEW, and STORMBREW. These programs, while different in scope, all had one distinct similarity: they all involved the National Security Agency placing themselves in a position to intercept traffic running through the backbone of the internet. Backbone positions are of the internet that all or a large majority of traffic must pass through. Things such as undersea cables, major Internet Service Providers, Domain Name System providers, etc. are all backbone positions. Here is a map of undersea cables, one example of backbone components:

One such program was codenamed BLARNEY. BLARNEY focuses on intercepting domestic internet traffic. The NSA uses their influence and buying power to win over positions with major ISPs and corporations, and then utilizes that infrastructure to conduct widescale and indiscriminate data collection. A map of BLARNEY's infrastructure can be seen below:

This new collections-oriented approach was not limited to just the new field of internet surveillance. It also was applied to traditional surveillance fields as well. Wiretapping, in the past, was generally not a widescale operation. One person’s phone, or perhaps one residence’s phone would be tapped to gain specific data. The NSA applied the same approach to their wiretapping procedure and gained access to telecommunications infrastructure as well. FAIRVIEW, a sister program to BLARNEY, has a very similar infrastructure profile which can be seen below: