The Business Ethics Blog

Here’s a story that would make a great case-study, or a challenging student research project.

It involves corporate participation in activites that are, on the one hand, arguably a patriotic contribution to national security, and on the other hand, ethically and legally questionable.

The issue is the role played by telecommunications companies in facilitating the U.S. National Security Agency’s warrantless monitoring of telephone and internet communications. This story from the NY Times is just a starting point.

Here are some snippets from the NY Times, on the role of companies in this story:

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

Several officials said that after President Bush’s order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States’ communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.’s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency’s operational capability, according to current and former government officials.