So it turns out that one company did demand – and get – the government’s legal rationale underpinning the 215 bulk collection program – a rationale that the rest of us didn’t get to see until more recently.
Ellen Nakashima reports:
Under threat of a court challenge, the Obama administration in 2010 revealed to Sprint the secret legal basis of a then-classified program that collected Americans’ phone records by the billions for counterterrorism purposes, according to newly declassified documents and interviews.
The company — the nation’s third-largest wireless provider — was the only firm to demand access to the legal rationale underpinning the National Security Agency program before its existence was revealed in June as a result of a leak from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, current and former U.S. officials said.
But after being shown the documents, the company dropped its challenge and continued to turn over customers’ call-detail records to the NSA.
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