Not Credible

When USA Today came out with it's report of the NSA gathering information on customer calling data from the telecommunications industry, there was only one company who clearly had refused to go along. All the other big companies - Verizon, BellSouth, and AT&T were reported to have cooperated with this illegality. Well now, like the reliable sunrise, come the denials of complicity:

Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., facing consumer lawsuits seeking massive damages, have issued carefully worded denials of a report that they turned over millions of customers' calling records to a U.S. spy agency. BellSouth and Verizon denied the part of the USA Today report that said the companies had received a contract from the NSA and that they turned over records. However, Verizon declined to comment on whether it provided access to the NSA......"Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has a relationship to the classified NSA program," the company said.

BellSouth said on Monday that "based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA." A BellSouth spokesman was not immediately available for further comment.

AT&T has been more circumspect, saying it has an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies but has refused to comment specifically on national security matters.

Electronic Privacy Information Center Executive Director Marc Rotenberg said the statements by government officials and phone carriers were "legal hair splitting.......There's a tremendous amount of parsing going on," Rotenberg said.

Realizing they are now experiencing a serious public relations disaster with their customer base, the companies issue their “nope – we didn't do it” defense. The problem is, if they didn't – why issue denials immediately when the news broke? Because they did cooperate and are lying now.
Posted on The Human Stain