Unless You Are a Qwest Customer, Your Phone Company Is Giving Your Phone Records to the NSA

Don't you love it when the TV detective picks up the phone and calls a buddy at the telephone company to get the records that catch the bad guy?  And when the bad guy is confronted with the 10 calls he made to the victim the night of the murder, the confession is only a commercial away?  Of course, this old plot ploy is only one of a number of Classic Constitutional Violations that are staples of the TV (and film, too) detective genre that we all know and love.

Well, you are the bad guy whose Constitutional rights are probably being violated now.  Thursday''s USA Today reported that three out of four of America's remaining mega-size phone companies are compiling your phone call records for examination by our friends at the NSA, as part of the Bush administration's War on the Constitution.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

Of course, Bush has minimized all this, saying it was limited to international calls of people actually suspected of terrorist links.  Not so:

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans.

There is a hero: Qwest.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants....

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

Seth Zlotocha over at In Effect muses:

Why would the FISA court -- which has only rejected 4 out of over 20,000 applications to come before it since it was established in 1979 -- deny the NSA's request for a court order?

Just a hunch here, but maybe it's because the program is unconstitutional.

You think?

With this one story, USA Today makes up for years of lightweight show-biz coverage. We all owe it our thanks.  Score one for USA Today and zip for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.

- Barry Orton

Comments

[Ben Masel]

TDS is not playing along either. I contacted the Media Relations office, left a voicemail, and 1/2 hour later heard back from their Manager of Communications.

She'd been told their policy is to provide call data only when subpoenaed. She also cautions that they have no control over routing info on shared networks.

I suggested they post this prominently, as a marketing advantage.

An hour after that, she emailed a link to their ensuing press release.

TDS' Policy Concerning Customer Call Records
Date: May 11, 2006
For More Information Contact:
DeAnne Boegli
525 Junction Road
Madison, WI 53717
608-664-4428
Recent news reports have called attention to a program of the National Security Agency that has collected call records from major telephone carriers including Verizon, SBC/ATT and Bell South.
TDS has a strong policy to protect our customer records and is in fact mandated by the Communications Act , section 222 to protect your records, and we do so with great care. TDS would only assist law enforcement or government agencies when requested via a valid subpoena. When these requests are made we do comply with state and federal laws.
Calls placed outside of our network which connect to one of the carriers that do participate in this program may become part their database, we are unable to restrict this activity. TDS does not have any authority over the other Carriers that complete your call.
We have no further information regarding the NSA program.