Early June, 2006: Lawsuit Alleges Constitutional Violations by NSA and Telecom Firms

A lawsuit is filed against three US telecommunications corporations, AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth, alleging breach of privacy in these firms’ cooperation with the NSA to monitor US citizens’ telephone and Internet communications. The lawsuit, McMurray v. Verizon Communications, alleges that the firms, along with the NSA and President Bush, violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the US Constitution. AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth have been accused of working with the NSA to set up domestic call monitoring sites (see October 2001). Evidence that the NSA set up domestic surveillance operations at least seven months before the 9/11 attacks is at the core of the lawsuit (see Spring 2001). Carl Mayer, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, says, “The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11. This undermines that assertion.” The lawsuit is the latest of over 30 suits against the telecommunications carriers over similar allegations. The Justice Department refuses to comment on the case because either confirming or denying “AT&T’s participation in the alleged NSA program because doing so would cause ‘exceptionally grave harm to national security’ and would violate both civil and criminal statutes,” according to an AT&T spokesman. The NSA program was code-named “Project Groundbreaker” (see February 2001), and a part of that above-board operation, code-named “Pioneer,” was originally slated to use AT&T facilities to secretly monitor domestic communications. That particular initiative was later scrapped in favor of the NSA constructing its own facilities, using commercial technology. The courts are considering combining all of the lawsuits concerning the warrantless, secret wiretapping and surveillance into one overarching court proceeding. Verizon, also named in the suit, says through a spokesman that it cannot confirm or deny “whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program.” BellSouth maintains that it was never contacted by the NSA at all over any participation in domestic surveillance, and says it never turned over any records to the NSA for its huge database of US citizens’ communications. [Bloomberg, 6/30/2006]