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BellSouth Corp. and AT&T Inc. were named in a $200 billion lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that telecommunications companies violated privacy rights by turning over customer phone records for use in a U.S. government call-tracking program to detect terrorist plots.

BellSouth and AT&T were added to the lawsuit seeking class-action status that was initially filed against Verizon Communications Inc. in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday.

[Reuters | May 16, 2006]

Verizon Communications Inc. on Tuesday joined fellow phone company BellSouth Corp. in denying key points of a USA Today story that said the companies had provided records of millions of phone calls to the government.

Verizon has not provided customer call data to the National Security Agency, nor had it been asked to do so, the company said in an e-mailed statement. The statement came a day after BellSouth Corp. made a similar denial….

Tuesday’s denial did not apply to MCI, the long-distance carrier Verizon acquired in January. In an earlier statement, Verizon said it is in the process of ensuring that its policies are put in place in the former MCI business.

[Associated Press | May 16, 2006]

President Bush insisted Tuesday that the United States does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the government’s alleged compiling of phone records, or whether it would amount to an invasion of privacy.

“We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval,” Bush said in an East Room news conference with Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

[Associated Press | May 16, 2006]

BellSouth says it has no evidence it was contacted by a U.S. spy agency or gave the government access to any of its customers’ phone call records, disputing a published report that sparked a national debate on federal surveillance tactics.

The regional Bell, which offers telecommunication services in nine Southeastern states, said Monday it had conducted a “thorough review” and established that it had not given the National Security Agency customer call records….

“Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA,” the company said in a statement.  

BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher said the company’s investigation found “no contract with the NSA and we are confident that we have turned over no phone records.”          

In a later telephone interview, Battcher added “we cannot find anyone within BellSouth who has ever been approached by the NSA.”  

[Associated Press | May 16, 2006]

Writing at his blog Global Guerillas, post-modern conflict thinker John Robb writes:

To me, it’s pretty clear that the people working on this program aren’t as smart as they think they are. Some top level thinking indicates that this will quickly become a rat hole for federal funds (due to wasted effort) and a major source of infringement of personal freedom. Here’s some detail:

• It will generate oodles of false positives. Al Qaeda is now in a phase where most domestic attacks will be generated by people not currently connected to the movement (like we saw in the London bombings). This means that in many respects they will look like you and me until they act. The large volume of false positives generated will not only be hugely inefficient, it will be a major infringement on US liberties. For example, a false positive will likely get you automatically added to a no-fly list, your boss may be visited (which will cause you to lose your job), etc.
• It will be expanded to include to monitor domestic groups other than al Qaeda. As we have already seen in numerous incidents across the US, every group that opposes the war or deals with issues in the Middle East will eventually fall under surveillance. Eventually, this will begin to bump up the political process by targeting groups that are politically active in the opposition party.

The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telephone industry, should open an investigation into whether the nation’s phone companies broke the law by turning over millions of calling records to the government, an FCC commissioner says.

[Associated Press | May 16, 2006]

The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly  seeking reporters’ phone records in leak investigations.

“It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,” said a senior federal official.

[ABC News | May 15, 2006]

CNN – “Lawsuit asks Verizon and government to end phone snooping and seeks $1,000 for each of phone company’s 50 million customers.”

The EFF has initiated a class-action lawsuit against AT&T, “accusing the telecom giant of violating the law and the privacy of its customers by collaborating with the National Security Agency (NSA) in its massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans’ communications.”

Here is John Negroponte’s response, which claims State Secrets.

Salon.com — “An intelligence expert predicts we’ll soon learn that cellphone and Internet companies also cooperated with the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on us.”