And in This Corner
Bellsouth’s denials of USA Today’s NSA story are going well beyond pro forma. Business Week reports on the shadowy world of third-party provision of records to government agencies. Something that doesn’t come up is that it’s possible that third parties could have supplied the government with Qwest’s records too, without Qwest’s knowledge or approval, or maybe with.
The Business Week article also illustrates how government evades the ostensible intent of laws to suit itself:
The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting.
“Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment,” says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.’s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee.
That’s quite the loophole, since it renders that provision of the law (text) meaningless. I’m not seeing this exception in a quick scan of the law, but sections (i) and (j) seem to have so much wiggle room you could hula through them.
Comment by Erstwhile —
May 20, 2006 @ 9:37 am
Remember when Clinton’s ’parsing’ was so ugly, so dispicable? I’m glad we’ve gotten beyond that, aren’t you?
Comment by Bill Arnold —
May 20, 2006 @ 9:58 pm
Little known fact; as a young company, QWest built the fiber optic intra-network at NSA headquarters.
Source – Bamford’s ”Body of Secrets”, p510. ”The cable contraact was offered to the small start-up fiber network company Qwest, said one person, ’because it was the only bidder that offered the agency its own fiber path that would not have to be shared with commercial users.”
Comment by srv —
May 20, 2006 @ 11:08 pm
It would be nice if some reporter researched all the phone/cell and credit-card companies and who they outsource their billing and/or online service to.
Ever get a late-night MCI call, where they say something like ”we’ve been looking at your call plan, and we can save you money”? And their english is a little off? Better yet, call your cell phone service number after 6pm and chat with them. They’ve got your phone information, and I’ll bet they’re not in the US.
If I were, say, an ex-TLA (3 Letter Agency) guy, and nobody was doing it, the first thing I’d do is setup a billing service overseas and low-bid for the work. Then give my pals back in gov’t a call.
Comment by Jim Henley —
May 21, 2006 @ 1:56 am
Someone beat you to it. The world does not lack for Amdocs conspiracy theories either.