Reply #76: ACLU Slams FBI Plan to Pay Telecoms to Store Phone Records

[L. Coyote]

ACLU Slams FBI Plan to Pay Telecoms to Store Phone Records
By Ryan Singel - July 24, 2007
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/aclu-slams-fbi-.html


An FBI proposal to pay the nations' telecoms to store phone records for years and to provide instant access to agents raises concerns about American's Constitutional rights, according to the ACLU. The $5 million per year initiative, revealed in the FBI's budget request (.pdf) for 2008, would continue ongoing payments to telecoms to reimburse them for filling emergency phone record requests from counter-terror investigators and be used to convince three telecoms to build special databases to store records for longer periods of time. AT&T and Verizon are two of the companies paid by the FBI, but the identity of the third is unknown.

The Justice Department has been pushing telecoms and ISPs to keep data longer and has pushed legislation to mandate a two-year "data retention" period for phone and internet records. While ISPs and telecoms largely decline to state how long they store information on their customers, ISPs generally destroy IP address records after several months, while phone companies retain long distance billing records for more than a year. The payment approach represents a way to achieve the same ends without convincing Congress or federal regulators to approve its proposals. The contracts also largely keep the issue out of the public eye.

Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office had harsh words for the proposal. ....