BellSouth Says It Gave NSA No Call Records

BellSouth Corp. said Monday its "thorough review" found no indication it gave telephone records to the National Security Agency as part of a federal anti-terrorism surveillance program.

A report last week by USA Today identified BellSouth, along with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc., as companies that had complied with an NSA request to turn over millions of customer phone records after the 2001 terror attacks.

"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 Atlanta-based regional Bell 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."

Last week, Battcher said the company had "not provided any information we would need a subpoena for."

The USA Today report followed earlier revelations of wiretapping on overseas calls without a court order and sparked a renewed national debate over government intrusion into Americans' civil liberties in the fight against terrorism.

Critics denounced the phone companies for complying with the NSA surveillance request, while others approved of compromising privacy for national security.

Another of the regional Bells, Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc., did not comply with the federal request for call logs.

An AT&T spokesman said the company had no comment on BellSouth's statement. A Verizon representative did not immediately return a call for comment.

Last week, Verizon said it had complied with relevant laws and was "committed" to customer privacy. San Antonio-based AT&T said it respects customers' privacy but has "an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare."

Battcher said BellSouth's customer service department had received little more than two dozen complaints about reports that private phone records may have been relayed to the government.

"We have 20 million land line customers, so 26 complaints is not a lot," Battcher said.

I don't care if every single one of these phone companies claims publicly that they did absolutely nothing with the NSA. But they damn sure better have been cooperating with the NSA in finding these terrorist scumbags and the traitors who help them. The phone records ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE PHONE COMPANY!!!!!!!! There IS NO LAW which says that they can't turn them over to the government for this purpose or just for marketing. The only restrictions are FOR ADMISSIBLE PURPOSES TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES (ie, phone records have to be subpeona'd for use in criminal cases to give the defendant a chance to respond to the request).

But in cases of intelligence gathering, the records can be provided as long as no individual identifying information is provided. As soon as a name or address is connected with the record, you are looking at subpeona requirements. At the point at which the information is incriminating or potentially incriminating, it is held under criminal evidence laws. But nothing the NSA does is going to put in front of a judge or prosecutor so the NSA doesn't give a damn about whose phone number is whose. They are looking for new places and numbers to subpeona and wiretap. It will be difficult to indict somebody based on this kind of information because a Federal judge will disallow anything which directly results from the phone call records as being fruit of the poisoned tree. But the NSA is looking to locate, surveil and disrupt terrorist networks, not to find them and indict them in a Baltimore Federal Court.

US government kept records of addresses of citizenry and opened mail during WWII:

Consequently, [A.S. Hudson -- administrator of the Fort Lincoln Detention Station] sought authorization to bring in a full-time German-speaking intelligence officer to eavesdrop on the detainees and to gather information on the nearby populace.
Some of the citizenry, he feared, might assist in escape attempts. Intelligence work, he argued, should also include examination of the detainees' incoming and outgoing mail in order to determine their attitudes.
On the basis of this opinion, Hudson and his staff set up index cards for each detainee, recording on them the names and addresses on all outgoing mail and the writers' names, addresses, and dates of arrival on all incoming mail. This practice would soon become standard procedure at all the INS camps.
A sampling of mail was to be opened and read. In addition, the chief patrol inspector ordered incoming packages inspected for unspecified contraband prior to delivery to the Germans.

general in charge of the CIA? Shocking! May 15, 2006 by Paul Greenberg

Some of the honorables in Congress are shocked - shocked! - that George W. Bush would nominate a military man to head the Central Intelligence Agency. To quote Saxby Chambliss, a Republican congressman from Georgia, Gen. Michael Hayden's military background would be a "major problem."

How's that again? Wasn't Stansfield Turner, an admiral, head of the CIA back in the Carter administration? Indeed, at last count, 13 of the 19 directors of the agency had served in the military at some time before their appointment. In the agency's early days, it was almost assumed a military man would head it.

A few of us are old enough to vaguely remember names like Walter Bedell Smith, Hoyt Vandenberg, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, and Sidney Souers, generals or admirals all, not to mention the day the wheel was invented . . . .

This four-star, Michael Hayden, comes out of the Air Force, where he developed an interest in intelligence work, and went on to head the National Security Agency; he hasn't worked at the Pentagon since 1999. It was John McCain, the senator from Arizona, who noted that by now Michael Hayden is more of a spook-in-chief than a military man. But whatever his assignment, he's done a heckuva job at it.

That doesn't mean the usual rock-chunkers in Congress won't do everything they can to derail Gen. Hayden's nomination. His greatest accomplishment may have been to oversee the development of a sophisticated computerized databank that's designed to spot and monitor international calls from al-Qaida suspects overseas to contacts in this country. Naturally he's been bitterly criticized for it, along with his commander-in-chief.

By authorizing such a program, it's said, George W. Bush has been undermining our liberties rather than protecting them against terrorists who care nothing about our laws except how to take advantage of them. Apparently we are supposed to sit back and let them do just that.

It's the familiar old Constitution-as-suicide-pact theory of law, which has been used against every administration serious about holding the country together since Mr. Lincoln's.

Henry Stinson would understand the objections to the general's appointment. He was Herbert Hoover's secretary of state in 1929 when he learned that American cryptographers had deciphered Japan's diplomatic cables. "Gentlemen," he harrumphed, "do not read each other's mail." And he shut down the whole, code-breaking operation. Brilliant.

The very existence of Gen. Hayden's computerized operation was a closely guarded secret till The New York Times told the world about it. I can't think of a greater disservice to the national defense on a newspaper's part since Col. McCormick's old Chicago Tribune, in its perfervid opposition to another war, revealed that American intelligence had broken the Japanese naval code. Looking back, it seems unfair that the Trib, unlike the Times, wasn't awarded a Pulitzer.

In one of the more widespread misnomers of our time, this operation has been dubbed a "domestic spying" program - even though it is designed to track only international calls to and from the United States. It's also been called illegal, unconstitutional and generally un-American by its critics, none of them very persuasive.

But it was Congress itself, by joint resolution, that empowered the president of the United States "to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States" immediately after September 11th. And the Constitution of the United States is quite explicit about who exercises such powers in the federal government: "The executive Power shall be vested in a president of the United States." (It's hard to beat the Founders when it comes to writing a simple declarative sentence.)

Back in 2002, when the memory of September 11th was still fresh, the appellate court that supervises the operation of FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) upheld the president's "inherent constitutional authority to obtain foreign intelligence information." Instead of the president's violating the Constitution by authorizing such wiretaps, the court ruled that to bar him from doing so would "encroach on the president's constitutional power."

This still closely guarded system of tracking calls from terrorists now is said, ominously, to authorize "warrantless searches," which is technically accurate. Just as our troops in Iraq conduct warrantless searches when searching for intelligence about the enemy, and should.

The program Gen. Hayden oversaw is just as important, and useful, in guarding the home front. At least one terrorist plot, a plan to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, was thwarted by intelligence derived from the NSA's program, or that's what The New York Times reported when it blew the whistle on this operation.

Conclusion: Instead of being lambasted for his role in developing this program, Gen. Hayden deserves another medal.

Paul Greenberg is the Editorial Page Editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.