Verizon Now Denies Role in NSA Spying Program Too

Following the announcement today by BellSouth that it couldn't find a contract on file with the NSA to secure phone records of millions of Americans, while refusing to say whether it had a similar contract with the Department of Defense which actually oversees the NSA, telecom giant Verizon has now announced that they did not cooperate with the NSA either.

Could this have something to do with the enormous lawsuit that has already been filed against AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon?

Here's Verizon's press release:

NEW YORK, May 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ - News) today issued the following statement regarding news coverage about the NSA program which the President has acknowledged authorizing against al-Qaeda:

(Notice the incorrect wording there.)

As the President has made clear, the NSA program he acknowledged authorizing against al-Qaeda is highly-classified. Verizon cannot and will not comment on the program. Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to it.

That said, media reports made claims about Verizon that are simply false.

One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers' domestic calls.

This is false. From the time of the 9/11 attacks until just four months ago, Verizon had three major businesses - its wireline phone business, its wireless company and its directory publishing business. It also had its own Internet Service Provider and long-distance businesses. Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records from any of these businesses, or any call data from those records. None of these companies - wireless or wireline - provided customer records or call data.

Another error is the claim that data on local calls is being turned over to NSA and that simple "calls across town" are being "tracked." In fact, phone companies do not even make records of local calls in most cases because the vast majority of customers are not billed per call for local calls. In any event, the claim is just wrong. As stated above, Verizon's wireless and wireline companies did not provide to NSA customer records or call data, local or otherwise.

Again, Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program. Verizon always stands ready, however, to help protect the country from terrorist attack[sic]. We owe this duty to our fellow citizens. We also have a duty, that we have always fulfilled, to protect the privacy of our customers. The two are not in conflict. When asked for help, we will always make sure that any assistance is authorized by law and that our customers' privacy is safeguarded.

Clear.as.mud.