WASHINGTON, May 12 — The telecommunications company Qwest turned down requests by the National Security Agency for private telephone records because it concluded that doing so would violate federal privacy laws, a lawyer for the telephone company's former chief executive said today.
In a statement released this morning, the lawyer said that the former chief executive, Joseph N. Nacchio, made the decision after asking whether "a warrant or other legal process had been secured in support of that request."
Mr. Nacchio learned that no warrant had been granted and that there was a "disinclination on the part of the authorities to use any legal process," said the lawyer, Herbert J. Stern. As a result, the statement said, Mr. Nacchio concluded that "the requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act."
So, while nominee for the CIA's top post, General Michael Hayden, will not be able to answer specific questions during his upcoming confirmation hearings about the details of the NSA program because they will be classified, the administration will still have to prove how they concluded they had the legal and constitutional justification to carry it out. No doubt, their lawyers will once again hide behind the 'inherent authority' argument - which is already wearing very thin.
AT&T had this to say of their complicity:
AT&T has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy," said Selim Bingol, a company spokesman. "We also have an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare."
Mr. Specter said in an interview that he would press for information on the operations of the N.S.A. program to determine its legality.
"I don't think we can really make a judgment on whether warrants would be necessary until we know a lot more about the program," he said.
Shouldn't they have considered that before they willfully surrendered the records of their customers?
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