MITM always unambiguously refers to an active attack. That's not what they do or have ever done. It stands for man-in-the-middle. They aren't in the middle when they tap fibers.
Lack of forward secrecy ciphersuites does allow for retroactive decryption upon server secret key compromise though, which is what I assume you meant.
Most big sites don't use forward perfect secrecy making MITM achievable.