[Infowarrior] - Telcos careful with words on NSA spy program

[Richard Forno]

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WRAPUP 1-Telcos careful with words on NSA spy program
Tue May 16, 2006 9:27 PM ET

By Jeremy Pelofsky

WASHINGTON, May 16 (Reuters) - 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 <BLS.N>,
Verizon <VZ.N> and AT&T Inc. <T.N>.

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.

Earlier on Tuesday, BellSouth and AT&T were added to a $200 billion lawsuit
against Verizon which accuses the three large telephone carriers of
violating privacy rights by turning over customer phone records for use in
the NSA program.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 26 plaintiffs in 18 states, seeks damages
for the estimated 200 million customers of all three companies.

"We're outraged at the actions of the NSA, the administration and the phone
companies," Bruce Afran, a public interest lawyer from New Jersey, said at a
news conference. He added that he wanted the companies to understand the
massive financial exposure they had on this issue.

USA Today said it has read the statements by Verizon and BellSouth and would
investigate the story further.

"We're confident in our coverage of the phone database story," said USA
Today spokesman Steven Anderson. "We will look closely into the issues
raised by BellSouth's and Verizon's statements."

U.S. President George W. Bush last year confirmed that the NSA was
eavesdropping without warrants on the international phone calls and e-mails
of U.S. citizens while in the pursuit of al Qaeda.

After the USA Today report, Bush defended U.S. intelligence programs,
arguing that the administration is obliged to "connect dots" to protect
Americans after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but he has refused to confirm or
deny the report.

"What I have told the American people is, we'll protect them against an al
Qaeda attack and we'll do so within the law," Bush said. Late on Tuesday,
the administration agreed to give let the full Senate and House of
Representatives intelligence committees review the domestic spying program.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew, Anna Driver, Philipp Gollner, Peter Kaplan;
writing by Jeremy Pelofsky, editing by Richard Chang; Washington Newsroom,
202-898-8300, fax 202-898-8383))