We are using their own control grid to mess up their shit, and they are getting scared.

It follows that foreign Internet traffic of communications intelligence interest - consisting of e-mail, file transfers, "virtual private networks" operated over the internet, and some other messages - will form at best a few per cent of the traffic on most US Internet exchanges or backbone links. According to a former employee, NSA had by 1995 installed "sniffer" software to collect such traffic at nine major Internet exchange points (IXPs).(37) The first two such sites identified, FIX East and FIX West, are operated by US government agencies. They are closely linked to nearby commercial locations, MAE East and MAE West (see table). Three other sites listed were Network Access Points originally developed by the US National Science Foundation to provide the US Internet with its initial "backbone".