A White House spokesperson has already denied the report in the New York Times. Of course, the US Government is a big place. On Fri, 20 Dec 2002, Christopher L. Morrow wrote:
Sure, or they could ask carriers to tap lines for them silently... in fact they can do that today with a court order.
or "lawful authority" Information from the FBI http://www.askcalea.net/ Information from Cisco http://www.cisco.com/wwl/regaffairs/lawful_intercept/ Verisign already offers out-sourced, one-stop wiretapping for voice. http://www.verisign.com/telecom/products/network/netDiscovery.html One Connection to all LEAs Instead of maintaining multiple delivery connections from every switch to every LEA, carriers only need one connection to VeriSign, who in turn connects to LEA facilities. http://www.csoonline.com/csoresearch/report49.html CSO survey of nearly 800 senior security executives found that 24 percent were willing to share information about customers with law enforcement without a court order. If law enforcement agents claim that their investigation concerns national security, the percentage of executives willing to share information without a court order rises to 41 percent. http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/guidelineslibrary.html Librarians professional ethics require that personally identifiable information about library users be kept confidential. This principle is reflected in Article III of the Code of Ethics, which states that [librarians] protect each library users right to privacy and confidentiality with respect to information sought or received, and resources consulted, borrowed, acquired, or transmitted.