eWeek: Privacy Groups Decry NSA Data Collection
Privacy groups responded with outrage to a May 11 news report that the National Security Agency is collecting records of billions of phone calls made in the United States.
USA Today reported that the NSA secretly collected phone call records supplied by AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon.
“A lot of us are starting to think the NSA has started to violate the law,” Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in Washington, told eWEEK May 11.
Rotenberg said collecting such data is something the NSA isn’t supposed to be doing.
“It appears to flatly contradict the statement by General Hayden when he said that the domestic surveillance program was highly targeted towards Al-Qaeda,” Rotenberg said. General Michael Hayden was head of the NSA at the time the collection of phone records was said to have begun, and is now the nominee to head the CIA.
Gen. Hayden is being questioned by Congress the week of May 15 about domestic surveillance.
According to the USA Today story, BellSouth, AT&T, Verizon and SBC agreed to cooperate with the NSA, while Qwest declined. AT&T and SBC have since merged and now operate under the AT&T name.