A BellSouth spokesperson has denied reports that the company had agreed to turn over phone call records to the National Security Agency.
“We have no contract with the NSA and we have not turned over any customer information to the NSA,” said Jeff Battcher, BellSouth’s vice president of corporate communications, in an interview with eWEEK on May 16.
Battcher said that Atltanta-based BellSouth spent several days investigating reports in USA Today that the company had agreed to turn over virtually all its customer calling data to the NSA, the government’s signals intelligence organization in Fort Meade, Md.
Click here to read more about the NSA’s secret collection of phone call records.
“BellSouth is a large corporation. [We] have over 65000 employees, we operate in 9 states,” Battcher said, explaining the delay in making the announcement, “we wanted to make sure that somewhere, sometime, this didn’t happen. We’re confident that this did not happen.”
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1963033,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701
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For the second time May 16, a major phone company named in a USA Today story about records being sent to the National Security Agency is denying that any such records were sent.
Earlier on May 16, BellSouth issued a very strong denial that the company was even contacted by the NSA, much less asked to provide records.
In a statement issued late May 16, Verizon said the company cannot confirm or deny any relationship it might have with the NSA.
However, the company did say that the USA Today report that it had agreed to provide details of all phone records to the NSA was false.
“One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls,” the company’s statement says. “This is false.”
“From the time of the 9/11 attacks until just four months ago, Verizon had three major businesses—its wireline phone business, its wireless company and its directory publishing business,” the Verizon statement said.
Four months ago, Verizon acquired MCI. MCI was not mentioned by USA Today as having been a participant in providing call data to the NSA.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1963275,00.asp?kc=EWRSS04069TX1K0000701
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