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Did Telcos Use Scapegoat-for-Hire in NSA Case?

Posted on May 20, 2006

Via Business Week, we learn that an entire niche industry has sprung up to provide the government with commercially purchased telecommunications records that the government isn’t allowed to purchase itself. (TPM Muckraker has a good sum-up.)

TPM Muckraker:

A new Business Week article may help explain how AT&T and BellSouth can say they didn’t help the NSA, despite the spy agency having millions of their records showing the call details of Americans using their networks.

The magazine reveals a hidden corner of the telecommunications world: a small group of companies who specialize in granting the government access to telecommunications records, conversations and real-time data on behalf of the telecom giants.

That’s right: the government now makes so many requests for wiretaps, phone records and call information that an industry has sprung up to handle the load.

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TAGS: business government muckraker nsa phone program record spying tpm week

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By cognitorex, May 22, 2006 at 6:55 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

FAILURE TO REIN IN BUSH ET AL IS APPEASEMENT
. The NSA charter is for foreign intelligence gathering, quite specifically, foreign activities only. Debating minutia, such as, what, why and upon whom the NSA domestically eavesdropped or collected call records is legally irrelevant.

Each time Congress allows a Hayden, or any George W et al insider, to break another law it is an act of appeasement. Appeasement emboldens this lawless junta and only serves to invite further corruption of thought and deed.

Consider Iran. If Congress and the Judiciary continue to collaborate by appeasing this geo-politically deficient and renegade cabal then we may well see that ominously forewarned nuclear Mushroom Cloud, preemptively, dropped by us.

If so, no amount of wailing and mea culpas will atone for the millennia of misery and hate that will be this Congress’s legacy to untold generations.

Ladies and gentlemen, these are serious times. Rise. Your moment of accountability is here.

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