Amid the flurry of revelations about federal eavesdropping that came out of a class action against AT&T this week, one question remains: Does the National Security Agency plan to stand in the shadows?

The feds so far have been content to let AT&T fight the suit, which accuses the telephone company of routing all of its customers’ audio and electronic communications to a secret NSA spying room, where the government had set up hardware that would allow it to listen in.