Dems Ask Telcos Spying Questions: Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to AT&T, Verizon and Qwest Tuesday, asking whether they gave the government billions of customer call records or bugged their networks on behalf of the nation's spooks.

The five-page letters, signed by committee chair John Dingell (Michigan), Ed Markey (Massachusetts) and Bart Stupak (Michigan), ask for detailed answers about the telecom companies' relationship with the National Security Agency post 9/11.

Specifically, the trio is asking whether the companies turned over call records without being served with legal papers as required by law, how the companies respond to emergency spying requests where the proper warrant doesn't have to be served for 72 days, whether the companies balked, whether they continue to turn over records sans warrant, and whether anyone in the government ever offered legal protection for providing it information.

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth (now owned by AT&T) have all been implicated by press reports in turning over billions of call records to the government for a data mining project, while AT&T is being sued over accusations that it allowed the NSA to install a secret internet spy room in San Francisco, among other U.S. cities. For its part, Qwest's former CEO Joseph Nacchio balked at the government's repeated requests for records and said he refused to turn them over without a lawful order.

The letters come at a critical juncture in the nation's debate over what powers the government should have to conduct anti-terrorism operations -- without court oversight -- inside the United States. The government is pushing for a permanent extension to the temporary expansion of powers given to it by Congress in August.

Those powers include the ability to order any communication service provider in the United States to engineer back doors into their network and to wiretap at will so long as they don't listen into purely domestic calls or use international communications of U.S. persons unless there's useful foreign intelligence info in the emails or calls.

The congressmen are asking the companies to respond by October 12, and the letters signal that the companies are likely to be called to testify before Congress. The Congressmen are unlikely to get full answers from AT&T and Verizon, which have repeatedly argued in court that they cannot defend themselves without spilling secrets.

A Verizon spokesman said the company will be 'responding as best we can to the letter.'

The nation's telecoms are reportedly enlisting well-connected former officials from both the Bush and Clinton administrations to convince lawmakers to free them from any liability for breaking the nation's privacy laws.

The telecoms are defending themselves against some 50 lawsuits seeking damages and a halt to the cooperation.' Nearly all of those are consolidated in a San Francisco federal court, where lawyers for the government, rights groups, and the telecoms are waiting for the 9th Circuit Appeals Court to rule on whether the suits must be dismissed on the grounds that they will endanger national security.

The government has remained extremely aggressive at pushing for new powers, even as revelations about abuse and extraordinary legal showdowns over the government's anti-terrorism powers.

The nation's spymaster, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, for one, has repeatedly warned that even talking about what powers the government should have will kill Americans. He's also shown a willingness to serially exaggerate to further the Administration's push for expanded spy powers.

See Also:

• Telecoms Continue Push For Get-Out-of-Court Card for Illegal Spying
• US Warrantless Spying Program Targeted Americans, Which Violates ...
• Clues To How the NSA Spies on Americans and Possible Immunity for ...
• Former DOJ Lawyer Couldn't Find Way to Legalize Bush Spying Program
• Spies Spent 50000 Days in 2006 Writing Warrants, Chief Spy Says

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)