Fergie's Tech Blog

27B Stroke 6: The BellSouth Denial - How Complete?

Ryan Singel writes over on 27B Stroke 6:

Note that BellSouth doesn't explicitly rule out the possibility that it provided the NSA with access to its phone record database; it just says it never turned over records in bulk. They deny a contract exists, but don't explicitly say there's no agreement or memorandum of understanding.

For instance, the late December Los Angeles Times story about AT&T's database of call records (a massive database comprising 312 terabytes of information and 1.88 trillion records) says that the NSA has a "direct hookup" to the database.

That's different from providing bulk records to the NSA.

One very specific paragraph in Singel's article here deserves special attention -- and is something that I echo:

I may be completely wrong here, but the USA Today put its credibility on the line with this story, so I'm inclined to look very closely at any denial by the companies allegedly involved.

More here.

posted by Fergie @ 5/16/2006 10:20:00 AM