Experts say phone firms at law's edge | Chicago Tribune

Verizon hit with $5 billion lawsuit.

Experts say phone firms at law's edge Chicago Tribune:

"The furor over the National Security Agency's collection of Americans' phone records intensified Friday, with one telecommunications giant slapped with a $5 billion damage suit for allegedly violating privacy laws and the former head of another firm saying through a lawyer that his company refused to participate because he thought the program was illegal.

Qwest, a Baby Bell serving 15 million customers mostly in the West, was approached in the fall of 2001 to permit government access to private phone records, according to an attorney for Joseph Nacchio, who at the time was Qwest's chairman and CEO.

Nacchio refused because the government had failed to obtain a warrant or cross other legal hurdles to obtain the data, according to the lawyer, Herbert Stern. 'Mr. Nacchio concluded that these requests violated the privacy requirements of the Telecommunications Act,' Stern said Friday in a written statement."