The iPhone: An Aid to Domestic Spying?

By Mark Pike, Campus Progress. Posted July 25, 2007.

If you didn't manage to snag an iPhone yet, it might not be the worst thing in the world. In addition to saving some money to pay off those pesky student loans, you also might be successfully avoiding wiretaps from the National Security Agency.

When Steve Jobs announced an exclusive partnership with AT&T during Macworld 2007, most Mac fanboys were too distracted by the glossy touch screens to realize that AT&T is the company most notoriously connected to domestic spying programs.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush signed a secret executive order that authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in America. Usually, these searches have been carried out on foreigners with appropriate warrants and oversight, following the protocol of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The Bush administration has argued that FISA is an unconstitutional infringement on the power of the executive office, and that the Authorization for Use of Military Force granted the President permission to change the rules. Constitutional scholars and privacy advocates disagree. The debate has continued, but so has rampant domestic surveillance.

The purpose of the spy program was to listen in on phone calls, emails, texts, and other forms of communication between people suspected of being connected to terrorist groups in the United States or overseas. Monitoring known terrorists would be easy enough using the FISA rules enacted in 1978, but the problem is that our intelligence agencies are clueless as to the whereabouts of terrorists. Therefore, the administration has argued that they need to cast a wider net and sift through more collected data about potential operatives to prevent terrorism.

In order to carry out these orders, the Federal Bureau of Investigation sent out bulk batches of form letters, which basically said, "Due to exigent circumstances, it is requested that records for the attached list of telephone numbers be provided." Most telecommunications companies read these letters, recognized the privacy concerns of their customers and the lack of legal authority in the FBI mass mailing, and refused to comply with the FBI's requests.

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Mark Pike is a student at William & Mary School of Law and is currently a summer clerk at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

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