Battle Lines Drawn Over NSA Program

Administration Promises Surveillance Is Legal, Congressional Leaders Demand Oversight

(CBS/AP) 
The phone surveillance program, as CBS News Pentagon correspondent David Martin explains, works like this:

An alleged terrorist with ties to al Qaeda is arrested overseas. Any American phone numbers he has on him or stored in his cell phone or laptop are turned over to the NSA. Under wartime powers approved by the president, the NSA immediately begins listening in on any international calls made to or from that number, without going through the standard legal procedure of first obtaining a court order to establish a probable cause that the person using the phone is part of the al Qaeda network, Martin explains.

The NSA also runs that same captured phone number through its database of phone records to determine all the calls made to and from that number inside the United States, again without having to obtain a court order. However, even under wartime powers, the NSA is still prohibited from actually listening to calls made within the United States; if a suspicious pattern emerges, it would have to get a court order before eavesdropping, reports Martin.

USA Today reported Thursday that the NSA was building a database with the help of three major U.S. telephone companies a revelation that highlights the problem of balancing American civil liberties with efforts to protect citizens from terrorist attacks.

Without specifically confirming the database effort, Mr. Bush defended the intelligence activities he has authorized, saying they are focused on al Qaeda terrorists and their affiliates. He reiterated that they are lawful and that appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat, have been briefed on the surveillance activities.

"Americans expect their government to do everything in its power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties," Mr. Bush said. "That is exactly what we are doing. And so far, we have been successful in preventing another attack on our soil."

The NSA is using the data to analyze calling patterns in order to detect and track suspected terrorist activity, according to information the White House provided to Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. "Telephone customers' names, addresses and other personal information have not been handed over to NSA as part of this program," Allard said.

Two New Jersey public interest lawyers, however, sued Verizon Communications Inc. on Friday for $5 billion, claiming the phone carrier violated privacy laws by turning over customers' records. The lawsuit asks the court to stop Verizon from supplying the information without a warrant or consent of the subscriber.

"This is the largest and most vast intrusion of civil liberties we've ever seen in the United States," attorney Bruce Afran said.

NSA has been working with three major U.S. telephone companies — Verizon, AT&T Corp. and BellSouth Corp. The three complied with the request to turn over phone records shortly after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, according to the USA Today report.

Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday.

In a written statement, the attorney for Joseph Nacchio, the former Qwest chief executive officer, said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters.

"Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act," attorney Herbert J. Stern said from his Newark, N.J., office.

Nacchio told Qwest officials to refuse the NSA requests, which kept coming until Nacchio left the company in June 2002, his lawyer said.