Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11

Found on Bloomberg on Saturday, 01 July 2006
Browse Politics

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

"The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11," plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. "This undermines that assertion."

The lawsuit is related to an alleged NSA program to record and store data on calls placed by subscribers. More than 30 suits have been filed over claims that the carriers, the three biggest U.S. telephone companies, violated the privacy rights of their customers by cooperating with the NSA in an effort to track alleged terrorists.

Let's see... The justification for giving up privacy and increased monitoring of everybody is the fight against terror. Now it seems like the NSA did all this wiretapping way before 9/11, and failed to stop the biggest attack on US soil. Let's assume the terrorists changed their method of communication since then (to non-obvious and/or encrypted messages): then all this surveillance would still be useless and a waste of resources.