In January, Gen. Michael Hayden, then the principal deputy director of national intelligence, the federal government’s interest in American [tag]phone calls[/tag] was “targeted” and “focused” on the [tag]al Qaeda[/tag] terrorist network. As it turns out, there’s a little more to it than that.
The [tag]National Security Agency[/tag] 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 [tag]NSA[/tag] 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 [tag]terrorist[/tag] activity, sources said in separate interviews.
“It’s the largest [tag]database[/tag] 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.
Just to be clear, the NSA is not listening to all of our phone calls (foreign and domestic); it’s just logging them into a massive database.
Dana Perino, deputy [tag]White House[/tag] press secretary, said that all intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government “are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists.” So, when you call Grandma, and the NSA enters that call into its records, it’s “necessary.”
USA Today ran a handy Q &A on this, including the two most obvious questions.
Q: Why did they do this?
A: The agency won’t say officially. But sources say it was a way to identify, and monitor, people suspected of terrorist activities.
Q: But I’m not calling terrorists. Why do they need my calls?
A: By cross-checking a vast database of phone calling records, NSA experts can try to pick out patterns that help identify people involved in terrorism.
And the Bush administration has proven itself to be trustworthy, and not all prone to abusing its power, so there’s obviously no reason to worry about a secretive agency logging every American call for secret reasons. What’s not to like?
By the way, after 9/11, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth all agreed to give the NSA what it wanted for this program — but Qwest didn’t.
Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest’s patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest’s refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.
In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest’s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.
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 [tag]FISA[/tag] 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.
Good for Qwest. It would have been easy to cave to heavy-handed pressure from the administration, but Qwest wanted assurances. At least one company did.