Hang up on them, and never call back:
"Phone Utilities Won’t Give Details About Eavesdropping" by ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 — The three biggest phone carriers have refused to tell members of Congress what role, if any, they had in the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. The utilities said it would be illegal to divulge classified information.
“Given the focus of your questions,” a lawyer for AT&T wrote to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in a letter released on Monday, “our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive relating to government surveillance activities.”
The role of the carriers will be central to the debate in Congress this week over limiting the eavesdropping. The Bush administration has pressed Congress to give the carriers immunity for their cooperation, but House Democrats are balking.
Democrats on the panel had asked AT&T, Verizon and Qwest for detailed responses on the roles. Like AT&T, Verizon and Qwest declined to answer specific questions.
Some Democrats on the House committee were not mollified. Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who leads the panel, said he would continue to press the administration for answers.
Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who leads the subcommittee on oversight, said, “While I recognize the unique legal constraints the telecommunications companies face regarding what information they may disclose, important questions remain unanswered about how the administration induced or compelled them to participate in the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping program.”
The carriers face a barrage of suits. The administration has sought to thwart the cases by invoking the “state secrets” privilege, and the utilities have said little because of the suits. Letters by the companies released Monday broadly defended the cooperation with law enforcement officials.
The companies also spoke of the damage they said has been done by the controversy.
As a result of the litigation, AT&T said in its letter, “carriers who are alleged to have cooperated with intelligence activities are faced with years of litigation, at great financial and reputational cost, and are forced to remain mute in the face of extreme allegations, no matter how false.”
Verizon said in its response that the burden should be on the government, not the phone companies, to establish that a request was proper and lawful.
“Such an approach is vital to ensure that providers are able to respond quickly to request for assistance,” Verizon said. “Placing the onus on the provider to determine whether the government is acting within the scope of its authority would inevitably slow lawful efforts to protect the public.”
Verizon and the other companies have acknowledged that they routinely comply with what Verizon called “lawful demands” for call records and access to phone lines. In 2006, the Verizon letter said, it received 88,000 such requests, about 34,000 from federal officials and 54,000 from state and local officials. Through September of this year, it received 24,000 federal requests and 37,000 state and local requests.
Verizon also acknowledged that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had asked for records to identify what it termed “a calling circle” but said it had not been able to provide them.
Verizon indicated that the F.B.I. had sought records for a broader network of callers than the bureau itself had previously acknowledged by requesting records not just on original targets and the people they had called, but on everyone that those people in turn had called."
[And they called two people, and they called two people, and so on, and so on...
Hey, I'll bet the FBI has ALL the CALLS by now, huh, reader?
Well, GOOD NIGHT (or morning, as the case may be), government!
:-(
