Putting Freedom on Hold

Individuals have the right—or at least ought to have the right—to be able to make phone calls freely, without fearing that the federal government is noting every conversation. But this apparently has not been the case. Last Thursday, USA Today reported that the nation’s three largest telecommunications companies (Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth) have been supplying the government with records that include caller and recipient phone numbers and locations, as well as the date, time, and duration of all calls made by their over 200 million customers. The National Security Agency (NSA) requested these records soon after the September 11 attacks in order to analyze patterns that may reveal terrorist activity, and these phone companies have readily complied. While it is unclear how useful this information will be, this solicitation of private information without Congressional knowledge or approval is an overreach of the executive branch’s authority.

But it is not just the federal government that has acted improperly. This entire scheme would have been impossible had telephone companies refused to cooperate with the federal government (and, as it turns out, one company did refuse to comply). The Telecommunications Act of 1997 requires that all carriers and service providers safeguard all communications and personal information about telecommunications users as private information. Exceptions are allowed only in cases in which the information is deemed “reasonably necessary” for criminal investigations and where the information is obtained via warrants.The NSA did not obtain approval, either legislative or judicial, to carry out this program. Without such oversight, the public has no guarantee that the information will be used only for criminal investigations.

Moreover, the telephone companies involved were complicit with this abuse of power. The companies in question—having entered into private contracts with their customers—should at least have informed customers of their intentions to release this information. It is disturbing that only one major telecommunications company, Qwest Communications, had the integrity to safeguard its customers’ privacy and refuse to submit the data.

Benjamin Franklin was right: if we continue to sacrifice our freedoms for security, we will gain neither and inevitably lose both. The initiation of this sort of program—especially in secrecy—is not only troubling, but underhanded. The government should be held to rigorous standards of oversight before it is allowed to spy on its citizens and hoard volumes of private information. In this case, it failed to do so transparently and attempted to circumvent legal due process. Still, Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth still acquiesced to the release of millions of private phone records. Both the government and the phone companies are thus at fault. Freedom’s ring in this day can be said to come not from a bell, but from a cell phone, and it is one we cannot afford to let the government silence.