ZoneFlood

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]