ThinkProgress uncovers a presidential memorandum allowing telecommunications companies to hide transactions which involve national security. Would it allow, say, Verizon to mislead the public on whether it cooperated with the NSA?
Late Update: Just spoke with Nancy Libin, a lawyer and policy expert with the nonpartisan Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C., who downplays the importance of the memorandum. “All this would do would immunize [telcos] from a lawsuit under securities laws,” she told me. “It woudn’t protect them from suits under the Electronic Communiations Privacy Act,” which protects the privacy of customer data.
