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Telephone Companies Implicated In Spy Scandal

December 26, 2005
The scope of the National Security Agency's (NSA) secret surveillance program of Americans far beyond previous programs and greatly exceeds what most observers had expected.

The New York Times reported that several major telecommunications companies voluntarily provided the NSA with "backdoor access" to monitor the relay switches that govern international telephone traffic.

The companies could not be identified, nor could specifics about the partnership, as much of the program remains classified.

The vast NSA surveillance program has been compared to previous attempts to mine data for government agencies, including the Total Information Awareness (TIA) and the "CAPPS II" airline passenger information program. Both programs were scuttled due to public concern over civil liberties and privacy rights.

The government's most recent attempt at farming passenger data for information on possible terrorist activity, Secure Flight, was forced to abandon the usage of commercial databases for its monitoring.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had also mistakenly put the names of 30,000 people on a "watch list" for potential problems.

The NSA surveillance program has come under heavy criticism for circumventing existing law and for potentially violating the Constitution.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) specifically allows "retroactive" warrantless searches and surveillance of potential targets, as long as the warrants are requested within 72 hours of the investigation itself.

FISA mandates specific time limits and continuing verification of "probable cause" to justify continued electronic surveillance. The Bush administration has said that it authorized the NSA to perform its own surveillance to avoid the regulations necessary to comply with FISA.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution specifically prohibits warrantless searches, allowing searches only "upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Although the telecommunications companies supplying the NSA with data were not identified, it has been standard practice for the major players in the telecom industry to provide data on payment histories and account information to other agencies for several years.

The principle of "universal default," wherein a late payment on a credit card bill or other utility bill can raise a customer's rates on all of their services, is employed by companies such as Verizon. Verizon has even taken the step of reporting itself as a creditor on consumer credit reports.

Data mining agencies such as ChoicePoint and LexisNexis sell tools to banks and financial institutions that enable them to verify applicants' identities in order to comply with requirements of the Patriot Act. As ChoicePoint is not officially considered a consumer reporting agency, it is exempt from the requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

As the government is specifically prohibited from collecting and maintaining databases on individuals under the 1974 Privacy Act, it has increasingly relied on outside companies to collect the data (often by questionable means), hoard it and provide it to government agencies such as the NSA.

In addition to the obvious dangers of privacy violation and information selling, many of these agencies employ inadequate security measures to protect consumer information, leaving the data troves vulnerable to identity thieves.

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