Verizon Denies Turning Over Customer Phone Data to NSA
Verizon, the country's second-largest phone company, said yesterday that it had not provided local phone records to the National Security Agency as part of efforts to compile a database of calling records to track terrorist activities. The announcement, a day after BellSouth issued a similar statement, came in response to a report in USA Today last Thursday that the three biggest Bell companies had handed over their customer calling records to the security agency, including data on local calls, without warrants. But the statement by Verizon left open the possibility that MCI, the long-distance carrier it bought in January, did turn over such records � or that the unit, once absorbed into Verizon, had continued to do so.
Verizon Denies Turning Over Local Phone Data, New York Times, May 17, 2006.
