Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. Intel Focused on Obtaining Long-Distance Phone Data

Matt Richtel and Ken Belson write in The New York Times:

Government efforts to obtain data from the nation's largest phone companies for a national security database appear to have focused on long-distance carriers, not local ones, statements by company officials indicate.

The statements have come in the week since USA Today reported that the National Security Agency had collected local and long-distance phone records on tens of millions of Americans from Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The responses by the companies suggest that the agency, in an effort to find patterns that could identify terrorists, sought records from major long-distance providers like the former MCI (now part of Verizon), AT&T and Qwest, but did not ask for data on local calls.

Technical experts said long-distance calling records could yield information not only on the companies' own long-distance customers, but also on traffic that the carriers connect on behalf of others, including some calls placed on cellphones or on Internet voice connections.

posted by Fergie @ 5/18/2006 10:36:00 AM