ACLU Demands Oversight from State Regulators

Phone companies are voluntarily turning over millions of customer records to the National Security Agency. Acting without either a court order or the knowledge or consent of their customers, these companies are providing the government with potentially intimate details about who you know and who you talk to - details that are stored in giant databases, and perhaps mined by the NSA's supercomputers to scan through each of our associations and interests for "suspicious" signs (whatever that may be).

Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have refused to investigate. That is why the ACLU has turned to state-based Public Utility Commissions (PUCs). These regulators oversee telecommunications, and many are charged with enforcing state laws designed to protect private call records and safeguard consumers from deceptive corporate practices. That is why we have asked PUCs in 24 states to investigate the phone companies and protect the privacy of millions of Americans.

In May 2006, USA Today revealed that since shortly after 9/11 at least two major phone companies - AT&T and Verizon - have been voluntarily granting the NSA direct, mass access to their customers' calling records, and that the NSA had compiled a giant database of those records. Subsequently confirmed by 19 lawmakers, this program extends to all Americans, not just those suspected of terrorist or criminal activity.

According to media reports the goal of this program is to "create a database of every call ever made within the nation's borders." This information can easily be linked to determine your identity, your friends, and your interests.

The unauthorized sharing of phone records is illegal under both state and federal law. But that has not stopped the NSA and President Bush. As with the NSA's program of wiretapping on Americans' conversations and e-mail, the president has evoked the threat of terrorism and used a contorted interpretation of presidential power to ignore the law. That means the NSA is operating outside the law - and without independent review by Congress or outside regulators.

This lawlessness must end. Federal officers have refused to act, so the ACLU has asked state regulators - with almost a century of experience regulating phone companies - to step in. Without revealing secret information, utility commissions have the power and the legal obligation to learn what the phone companies are doing with their customers private information and whether they are being upfront with their customers about those practices.

Please click the links throughout the page to read about what we are doing in your state. Then take action - send a petition to the FCC and/or contact your local state commission. Urge them to get to the bottom of the phone company's illegal spying.