The Horse's Mouth

OK, here's a bit more info on the big phone records scandal. As you already know, the battle between USA Today and BellSouth heated up today, when the phone company demanded a retraction of USA Today's explosive story saying the National Security Agency was collecting their and other companies' records of phone calls made by private citizens. The paper appears to be sticking by its story, though not as full-throatedly as one might expect.

Now BellSouth's spokesman, Jeff Battcher, tells me that the company is considering suing USA Today over the story. "It certainly is one of the options being considered," he told me. This is interesting, and here's why. I'm no lawyer, but I've gotta think that such a legal battle could result in a lengthy discovery process that could force some of this stuff into the public domain. Who knows whether this will happen, but it at least seems possible. It's worth noting that this is something the company definitely wouldn't want if it were lying.

But here's something else that's key. Battcher acknowledged to me that he couldn't be sure that the NSA hadn't accessed their records through a third-party subcontractor, as some folks have been speculating lately. In our conversation there was some stuff that will lend comfort to both critics and defenders of the USA Today story.

Battcher conceded that he couldn't rule out the possibility that NSA had approached any of the subcontractors who work with BellSouth, such as long distance companies or outfits that do data transmission, handle billing or do other services. Battcher acknowledged it's possible that these companies "could have bits and pieces" of info of the sort that the NSA might have approached them for. So it's at least partly possible to reconcile BellSouth's now-vehement denial with the original story.

Battcher also insisted: "If that happened, it certainly wasn't with the knowledge or authority of BellSouth, and [the subcontractors] would be in violation of our agreements with them." If Battcher's telling the truth, it's hard to imagine data-collection happening on the massive scale alleged in the article without the help of the company itself. On the other hand, he's basically acknowledging that some kind of phone-records collection could have happened without BellSouth's knowledge of it.

Adding to the intrigue, Laura Rozen's War and Piece blog steers us to this TPM Muckraker piece about how small companies specialize in giving the government access to telecom records, making it possible for the NSA to get the info they want without the companies themselves being the ones who turned it over. (Of course, if this had happened BellSouth would have known that the NSA had gotten its hands on their data.)

As I said before, this is some pretty dense fog, and the more light shined into it, the better.