NSA Data-Mining Domestic Call Records

The NSA, with the help of the largest phone providers, has been data-mining and analyzing the phone records of nearly every American since 9/11 in hopes of detecting calling patterns indicative of terrorists, according to a blockbuster story by USA Today's Leslie Cauley.

AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon all agreed to provide the phone records to the NSA, which is compiling "largest database ever assembled in the world," said one of USA Today's anonymous sources.† The goal: "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

Contents of the calls are not being monitored, as they are in the previously disclosed warrantless eavesdropping program that targets international calls and emails to and from Americans suspected of having ties to terrorists.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. [...]

With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.[...]

The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

[...]

The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

Link.

One major telco, Qwest, declined to participate in the program, despite a strong sell from that NSA that included suggesting that the company's reticence could endanger national security and the company's ability to get classified work with the government, according to Cauley.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

Qwest had good reason to be queasy.† Federal telecommunications law imposes harsh financial penalties on disclosing calling information without a proper subpoena or letter from the attorney general.† Fines can be as high as $130,000 a day per violation.

While the White House has not yet confirmed the story, it justified its warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, which bypasses the secret court that approves wiretaps on spies and terrorists, by arguing that the inherent power of the president to wage war in the Constitution supersedes federal law.

USA Today has a handy FAQ here, while the AP already has up a piece on the impact of the story in Congress and on the nomination of former NSA chief General Michael Hayden to lead the CIA.