May 18, 2006

Verizon Communications became the second largest phone company to explicitly deny turning over to the National Security Agency phone call records of millions of Americans.

“Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records from any of these businesses, or any call data from those records.

None of these companies—wireless or wireline—provided customer records or call data,” Verizon said in a statement.

Verizon declined to comment whether its denial applied to long-distance carrier MCI Inc., which it acquired in January.

Last week, USA Today reported Verizon, AT&T Inc. and Bellsouth Corp. gave NSA access to millions of phone call records, prompting a slew of lawsuits against the telecom giants.

Earlier this week, BellSouth said it is not working with the NSA on a domestic eavesdropping program put in place by the Bush administration in 2001, but whose existence was secret until last December.

Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA Inc. last week said they are not participating in NSA’s anti-terrorist eavesdropping program.

Cingular Wireless L.L.C.—owned by BellSouth and AT&T—Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T have declined to comment on whether they have data mining arrangements with the NSA.

Qwest Communications International Inc., which provides wireless service using Sprint Nextel’s CDMA network, reportedly rejected NSA’s request for phone call data.

Rep. Edward Markey, ranking minority member of the House telecom and Internet subcommittee and co-chair of the House privacy caucus, and Federal Communications Commission member Michael Copps have called for the FCC to investigate whether any telecom carriers have broken subscriber privacy laws.

Source: RCR