ABSTRACT
The September 11, 2001 attacks on America clearly created an era of heightened security throughout the entire nation. Nevertheless, the collecting of data on private citizens by way of phone record scrutiny became a major issue in summer 2006, when USA Today disclosed that the U.S. spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), was secretly collecting phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. The fact that the NSA did not get prior approval from a court to pursue electronic surveillance on domestic phone calls in this particular instance gave the George W. Bush White House the unenviable task of attempting to explain how, why, and by whom such decisions were made. The President’s explanation of policy was that the USA Patriot Act of 2001 (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act) had given the government the authority to take unusual security measures to protect its citizens. On the other hand, this challenge came as a follow-up to earlier disclosures that customer records had received scrutiny in other divergent contexts. Most notably, this included passenger records from major airlines including American and Delta and a particular incident in 2003, when the government, anticipating a possible New Year’s Eve attack in Las Vegas, put together the records of over a quarter of a million hotel guests and airplane passengers, even though no credible threat of an attack was ever uncovered. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that air passengers and hotel guests who visited the desert city in Nevada from December 22 to January 1 had their records scrutinized.1 In a similar vein, requests for customer records from search engines AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google by the U.S. Department of Justice resulted in all but Google handing over the material.
Using pattern recognition, key words, and other sophisticated techniques, computers can now sift through massive amounts of data and produce personal profiles of consumer interests and tastes, areas that customers have consistently argued to be off limits for purposes of sharing or selling to outsiders.
The New York Times reported in late 2005 that President Bush had authorized eavesdropping without warrants by the NSA. The companies involved in those requests including AT&T Inc., BellSouth Corp., and Verizon Communications Inc. all issued statements clarifying that they protected customer privacy and followed the law but refused to provide additional details at that time. Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA Inc. denied having ever given material to the NSA and one other major telecommunications company, Qwest Communications International Inc., said that it had refused to turn over records. The next month the Electronic Frontier Foundation alleged in a class action federal lawsuit that AT & T had given the NSA direct access to the records of hundred of millions of voice calls as well as Internet data traffic.
After the public disclosure of the collection of the phone records and soon after he had delivered a university commencement address, the President said, “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.” He then reinforced that all efforts were focused on links to terrorists-“Al Qaeda and known affiliates.”2
