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NSA leak sting?
Somebody gave USA Today the story. At least two of the named cooperating phone companies are absolutely denying it is true. Possibilities: 1) the companies are lying, 2) the story was planted to divert attention from some real operation or to scare terrorists into different communication systems, or 3) the story was planted WITHIN NSA to identify a source of leakage.BellSouth demands USA Today retract NSA claims WASHINGTON (Reuters) - BellSouth Corp., the No. 3 U.S. local telephone company, on Thursday demanded USA Today retract claims in a story that said the company had a contract with a U.S. spy agency and turned over customers' telephone records. BellSouth spokesman Jeff Battcher denied the company had a contract with the National Security Agency and did not give access or provide call records to the spy agency as part of an effort to thwart any terrorist plots. USA Today reported last week that the NSA has had access to records of billions of domestic calls and collected tens of millions of telephone records from data provided by BellSouth, Verizon and AT&T Inc.. "BellSouth insists that your newspaper retract the false and unsubstantiated statements you have made regarding our company," BellSouth said in a letter to USA Today President Craig Moon and the general counsel at the newspaper's parent company Gannett Co. The NSA and the Bush administration has refused to confirm or deny the USA Today report. ... Verizon has also denied it was approached by the NSA and had a contract to provide the agency with data from its customers' telephone records. But the company has declined to comment on whether it gave the NSA access to its records. AT&T has refused to comment directly on the USA Today report. Posted by: Glenmore 2006-05-19 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=152736 |