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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Attention in N.S.A. Debate Turns to Telecom Industry Attention in N.S.A. Debate Turns to Telecom Industry By SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 — Though much of official Washington has been caught up in the debate over the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program, one set of major players has kept a discreet silence: the telecommunications corporations. Some companies are said by current and former government officials to have provided the eavesdropping agency access to streams of telephone and Internet traffic entering and leaving the United States. The N.S.A. has used its powerful computers to search the masses of data for clues to terrorist plots and, without court warrants, zeroed in on some Americans for eavesdropping, those officials say. Now the companies are in an awkward position, with members of Congress questioning them about their role in the eavesdropping. On Thursday two Democratic senators, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, wrote to the chief executives of AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon, asking them to confirm or deny a report in USA Today on Monday that said telecommunications executives had identified AT&T, Sprint and MCI (now part of Verizon) as partners of the agency. The two senators demand information that, if it exists, would be highly classified: details of secret N.S.A. requests for help and the number of people whose communications were intercepted. In a Feb. 2 reply to a similar query from Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, AT&T offered a careful response. The two-paragraph note did not deny that the company was assisting the agency. "Without commenting in any way on press reports," wrote Wayne Watts, AT&T's senior vice president and associate general counsel, "let me assure you that AT&T abides by all applicable laws, regulations and statutes in its operations and, in particular, with respect to requests for assistance from governmental authorities." The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit privacy group, has filed a class-action suit against AT&T maintaining that the company's cooperation with the agency is violating customers' privacy. The suit says the company is providing the N.S.A. "direct access" to its "key domestic telecommunications facilities," but does not offer proof. December's disclosure of the N.S.A. program and the corporate role in it has trained an unusual spotlight on the extensive and secret cooperation between the government and communications companies. The companies routinely assist law enforcement and intelligence agencies with eavesdropping authorized by court warrants, a task streamlined by a 1994 law requiring a back door for the government in every new telephone technology. The law, called the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or Calea, has created a thriving "lawful intercept" industry for technology to make eavesdropping easier. But for decades such cooperation has sometimes gone further. Federal law permits companies to intercept calls or e-mail messages without a warrant and protects them from lawsuits if a "certification" is provided by the attorney general or his deputies stating that no warrant is needed. Such certifications may have been provided to companies assisting the N.S.A. program, because President Bush has said that he authorized it in a secret executive order to operate without warrants. Mr. Bush has said the program is aimed at international communications of people in the United States who are suspected of links to Al Qaeda. The companies "are going to want to see an explanation of why it's lawful," said Kenneth C. Bass III, a communications lawyer in Washington who worked closely with the N.S.A. as a Justice Department official from 1978 to 1981. Corporate cooperation with the agency is one of the government's most sensitive secrets, and neither company representatives nor N.S.A. officials would discuss it. "If the carriers could talk about this, they'd say, 'We believe we're doing this on a legal basis, and we think this is an appropriate role for us,' " said Michael J. Kleeman, a veteran telecommunications entrepreneur now at the University of California, San Diego. Mr. Kleeman and other experts say the kind of cooperation now being provided by the companies has long been customary and is mirrored in many other countries. American telephone executives have traditionally seen their companies' cooperation with intelligence agencies as a patriotic duty, industry officials say. The officials say they have not heard of companies' receiving regulatory breaks, contracts or other benefits for cooperation, both because a quid pro quo is not necessary and because it might expose the secret assistance. The companies' ties to Washington are formidable. Once a year, 30 of the country's top telecommunications and Internet executives gather in the capital to talk with the government about national security topics like how phone systems can survive nuclear attack. All members of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, as the group is known, have been given security clearances to discuss classified programs with senior domestic security, intelligence and White House officials. (Vice President Dick Cheney was at last year's meeting.) Asked whether the committee had discussed the N.S.A. eavesdropping, a committee spokesman, Steve Barrett, said in an e-mail message, "The N.S.T.A.C. is not involved in the gathering of intelligence." The digital revolution has made government eavesdropping more dependent than ever on corporate cooperation, telecommunications experts say. For decades, the N.S.A. was able to snatch most communications out of the air, maintaining a network of dish antennas to capture traffic transmitted by commercial satellites. But most international traffic has shifted over the last two decades to undersea fiber-optic cables. While a tap can be placed surreptitiously on a cable, company cooperation makes it far easier to sort the thousands of digital messages carried simultaneously in it. "If you're going to monitor traffic over a fiber cable, you really need the carrier's cooperation," said Jerry Lucas, a telecommunications veteran whose company, TeleStrategies Inc., runs a regular conference called "Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception" where government officials meet company technicians to discuss eavesdropping issues. As digital technology has grown more complex, the Calea law has made snooping easier, said Anthony M. Rutkowski, president of the Global Lawful Intercept Industry Forum, a group of companies that produce equipment to comply with Calea (pronounced kuh-LEE-uh) and similar foreign laws. "I don't know of a vendor anywhere that hasn't built intercept capability into its equipment," Mr. Rutkowski said. But the cost of adding intercept capability sometimes leads to resistance. Currently some companies are fighting a government effort to require intercept capability on the Internet phone service called Voice Over Internet Protocol, or V.O.I.P. Mr. Rutkowski said the controversy over the N.S.A.'s current practices, like past controversies about domestic surveillance, might have value. "The marvelous thing about the resilience of the system is that the pendulum does swing," Mr. Rutkowski said. "Eventually it creates a balance between the legitimate need of the government for information against the privacy rights of the citizens." Ken Belson contributed reporting from New York for this article.
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