ZoneFlood

A new Business Week article may help explain how AT&T and BellSouth can say they didn’t help the NSA, despite the spy agency having millions of their records showing the call details of Americans using their networks.

The magazine reveals a hidden corner of the telecommunications world: a small group of companies who specialize in granting the government access to telecommunications records, conversations and real-time data on behalf of the telecom giants.

That’s right: the government now makes so many requests for wiretaps, phone records and call information that an industry has sprung up to handle the load.

[TPMmuckraker | May 19, 2006]

From Tim Grieve at Salon.com:

Cruising through the White House Web site earlier this month, we noticed a rather cryptic Memorandum for the Director National Intelligence. In the memorandum, dated May 5, 2006, and posted a few days later, George W. Bush delegated to John Negroponte “the function of the president under section 13(b)(3)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A)).”

We didn’t know what it meant, and — the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 not being our first choice for leisure reading — we didn’t take the time to find out. But Think Progress is connecting the dots this morning, and the picture that’s emerging is a pretty interesting one.

The Securities Exchange Act requires companies to “make and keep books, records, and accounts” which “accurately and fairly” reflect their transactions. But the Securities Exchange Act provision Bush cited in his memorandum waives that requirement for transactions involving national security in which a company has cooperated with the federal government after receiving a “directive” from a government official who has been authorized by the president to give one. In issuing his memorandum, Bush gave Negroponte the authority to issue such a directive.

What does that mean? It means that Negroponte now has the authority to free companies that cooperate with him from the obligation to record — and potentially reveal — the activities in which they’re engaged. And what does that mean? Negroponte now apparently has the power to allow the telephone companies that have been turning over telephone records to the NSA to keep their “transactions” — the payments they’re getting from the NSA — off of their books.

Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., facing consumer lawsuits seeking massive damages, have issued carefully worded denials of a report that they turned over millions of customers’ calling records to a U.S. spy agency.

USA Today reported last week that the National Security Agency has had access to records of billions of domestic calls and collected tens of millions of telephone records from data provided by BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T Inc..

BellSouth and Verizon denied the part of the USA Today report that said the companies had received a contract from the NSA and that they turned over records. However, Verizon declined to comment on whether it provided access to the NSA.

“One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls,” Verizon said in a statement on Tuesday.

However, “Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has a relationship to the classified NSA program,” the company said.

BellSouth said on Monday that “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.” A BellSouth spokesman was not immediately available for further comment.

AT&T has been more circumspect, saying it has an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies but has refused to comment specifically on national security matters.

A company spokesman on Tuesday declined to comment about whether it provided the NSA access.

Electronic Privacy Information Center Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said the statements by government officials and phone carriers were “legal hair splitting.”

“There’s a tremendous amount of parsing going on,” Rotenberg said.

[New York Times | May 16, 2006]

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]

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]

 New York Times:

Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University, said his reading of the relevant statutes put the phone companies at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order.

‘This is not a happy day for the general counsels’ of the phone companies, he said. ‘If you have a class action involving 10 million Americans, that’s 10 million times $1,000 — that’s 10 billion.’

Customers are hearing from AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon.

•  A customer’s conversation with a Verizon customer service rep.
• Verizon Media Relations e-mail message to concerned customers.
• An AMERICAblog reader hears from AT&T.
• More statements from the telcos.
• As we know, QWEST bowed out of the NSA program. Folks are congratulating them at ThankYouQuest.org.

We better hope nothing happens to Arlen Specter, the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee, because he might be all that’s standing between us and a full blown dictatorship in this country. He’s vowed to question these phone company executives about volunteering to provide the government with my telephone records and yours, and tens of millions of other Americans.

Shortly after 9-11, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth began providing the super secret NSA with information on phone calls of millions of our citizens, all part of the war on terror, President Bush says.

Why don’t you go find Osama Bin Laden and seal the country’s borders and start inspecting the containers that come into our ports?

The President rushed out this morning in the wake of this front page story in USA Today and he declared the government’s doing nothing wrong and all of this is just fine.

Is it? Is it legal?

Then why did the Justice Department suddenly drop its investigation of the warrantless spying on citizens? Because the NSA said Justice Department lawyers didn’t have the necessary security clearance to do the investigation.

Read that sentence again.

A secret government agency has told our Justice Department that it’s not allowed to investigate it. And the Justice Department just says okay and drops the whole thing.

We’re in some serious trouble here boys and girls.

[CNN/Jack Cafferty | May 11, 2006]