On May 10, USA TODAY, citing “people with direct knowledge of the arrangement,” reported that the NSA has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, “using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.”
Five days later, BellSouth issued a statement denying that it had had a contract with the NSA and that it had provided “bulk customer calling records” to the NSA. Yesterday, Verizon issued a similar statement. According to the New York Times, AT&T yesterday repeated earlier statements that it cooperates with law enforcement agencies “only when they have a court order.”
It seems most unlikely to me that these giant telecom companies are now engaged in document shreading operations to cover-up relationships with the NSA. The consequences of a failed coverup would be far worse than those of admitting to working with the NSA.
So, what gives?
Back on April 26, I took note of the fact that two of the winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes (Dana Priest of the Washington Post and James Risen of the New York Times) authored articles that revealed government secrets and averred that honoring Priest and Risen would encourage others to follow in their footsteps.
Perhaps USA TODAY’s Leslie Cauley succumbed to this temptation. It’s especially noteworthy that she did not state that her sources worked for the telecom companies. Indeed, “people with direct knowledge of the arrangement” need not be employees of BellSouth, Verizon, and AT&T. They could also be NSA employees. More to the point, they could be NSA employees who deliberately supplied misinformation to her so as to provide a warning to reporters that divulging national secrets could be dangerous to their professional health. Cauley may now be in the rather uncomfortable position of having to reveal her sources to save her career. Of course, her sources need not be who they said they were.
A sting operation? Perhaps.
You mean Plame was investigating the 500 things from Brewster’s millions and ended up with her own retired people and the Congressional investigation accessing this NSA database, which has been there forever anyway?
Or from another angle, if they’re not considering, and in fact executing, these types of stings, then it’s a sure sign they’re willing to continue playing defense rather than offense. Of course there’s an intelligent and fruitful way to play offense, and less intelligent ways, but to play defense, in perpetuity, is also to be willing to play dumb in perpetuity.
Refuse to play defense. Deny. Plame or CIA never looked anybody up and likes you alot.
Congress uses the intelligence, play dumb in perpetuity.
Since none of the secrets leaked were substantiated, is it possible there has never been a leak? The MSM are known to create their stories since the days of Durante and Edgar Snow. May be the reporters are continuing their Pulitzer Prize honored tradition of creating their stories from their run away imagination. Who can tell? Who can disprove a secret that has never existed?
Another of Karl Rove’s rascally plots!
It’s the bloggers who are supposed to ake things up.
It is entirely possible that the Pulitzer Putzs have fallen on their faces. But on the other hand, I would not doubt for one moment the NSA’s technical ability to collect such information without the permission of the phone companies.
After all, the data certainly is not encrypted and probably is freely available to anyone with the know how. The guys on “24” could do it. The NSA can almost certainly do it.
Shucks, Radio Shack could probably do it for $19.95.
Here is what’s going on. There is a $200 billion class action lawsuit against these companies. Most class action suits have trouble getting people to sign on to it. In this case, the attorney’s phones are ringing off the hook. Because of this, the telecom companies cannot admit to anything or else expose themselves to losing the case. They can either deny or say nothing.
PoliticalCritic,
If they had agreements with the NSA, they’d be a lot better off saying nothing than lying.
Marc Shulman is wondering….
....if the NSA phone records story was a sting operation just like the secret prisons story might have been.On May 10, USA TODAY, citing “people with direct knowledge of the ar…
[...] The sting—if it’s that—is starting to bite. This entry is filed under Media, Domestic Surveillance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply [...]
Fake, but accurate! Where have we heard that before?
[...] Others have suggested other possible scenarios. Marc Shulman questioned whether the whole USA Today story might be part of a sting operation. Interesting hypothesis, but I’m more inclined to go along with the legal loophole or the implications of a story in yesterday’s BusinessWeek Online. That story reminds us that the government has been involved in buying commercial databases: Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting. [...]
[...] Last week, Mr. Cheney organized a coup in the Judiciary Committee to kill Mr. Specter’s plan to subpoena telecommunications executives and ask them about the USA Today report that their companies are turning over phone records without a court order. Mr. Cheney told the panel’s Republicans to oppose subpoenas and said the executives had been ordered not to testify because they could expose “extremely sensitive classified information.” That’s odd, given that the phone companies keep denying the report. [emphasis added] [...]
The news is fabricated from my family’s life, and perhaps others. What happens in my home, on my phone, in my car…becomes twisted into news releases.