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The area code, also known as the Number Plan Area (NPA), of a phone number, is extremely important. These three digits are what generally identify a geographical calling area of a switch that provides telephone devices within the area service. The NPA typically applies to the United States and Canada.

Using an area code with a telephone number is required when making long distance calls, and may also be required – depending on where you live -when making local calls. Area codes help you get in touch with the right person and vice versa. For this reason, it is imperative you make sure the right people are able to contact you by remembering to provide them your local area code with your phone number.

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 With the recent release of reams of phone records from a woman accused of running a Washington prostitution ring, bloggers and others online have taken up the cause of hunting for links to elected officials and other prominent people.

Titillated by the prospect of uncovering another name like that of Sen. David Vitter, the Louisiana Republican who admitted his number was on Deborah Jeane Palfrey's escort service phone list, bloggers, many of them liberal, are scouring the records and publishing what they find.

So far, no names matching the caliber of Vitter's have been uncovered, although blogger David Corn, the Washington editor of the liberal weekly The Nation, found a phone number with a Senate prefix from 1999. And the Chicago Tribune reported on one of its blogs earlier this week that the records show a call from the escort service to the newspaper's national desk in Chicago in 2001.

Other websites are casting a wider net than just public officials.

The blog "Hot Potato Mash" is collecting and publishing a list of names and numbers, including the results of calls made to the phone numbers in Palfrey's files. So far the search has uncovered numbers for hotels, businesses and homes. Several numbers were out of service or appeared to have been reassigned over the years to new phone customers.

Alan Breslauer, a Los Angeles man who runs Hot Potato Mash, said most people he has contacted by phone have been friendly, and some are appreciative when he tells them their phone numbers are linked to the scandal.

"It is public record. It is unfortunate. I think these people are going to have to change their numbers no matter what," he said. "I think the information is important enough that we have to go through it and find out."

Palfrey published the records dating between 1994 and 2006 on her own website after a federal judge on July 5 lifted a restraining order that prevented her from releasing the files. Palfrey, who faces criminal racketeering charges, wants to identify former clients to get them to support her claim that her escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, did not involve prostitution but was a legitimate business offering sexual fantasies.

The records contain the numbers called by Palfrey's service, usually to confirm escort arrangements with a client.

She initially gave some of the records to ABC News, which linked her escort service to Randall Tobias, a top State Department official who subsequently resigned. After the restraining order was lifted, Palfrey's lawyer distributed about 50 CD-ROMS with scanned images of the files to bloggers and news organizations.

Vitter released a statement on Monday saying he had committed a "very serious sin" in the past, but did not acknowledge using the escort service. The phone records show five calls were made by Palfrey's service to Vitter while he was in the House of Representatives, including two while votes were under way.

Palfrey's lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley, said Thursday that he already has been contacted by people who have identified names connected to the phone numbers, including one woman who said her ex-boyfriend was among them. He plans to have an investigator contact those who were named.

"I am five or six witnesses up from where I was a week ago," Sibley said.

For those trying to determine if a particular number is on Palfrey's list, one website called "dcphonelist.com" claims to allow a user to enter a phone number in a search field to see if it is on the list. In an e-mail to The Associated Press, the site's organizers would not identify themselves but said they were three tech guys from Boston and were "just some citizen journalists providing a public service."

The site has some self-acknowledged shortcomings, however, such as its reliance on optical character recognition technology to pull numbers from the phone files, which are scanned copies of printed phone records. The site urges users to double-check the accuracy of the numbers. However, it is one of the few ways to search the data rather than sifting through hundreds of pages of records.

Price, who edits the Citizens for Legitimate Government website from her home in Bristol, Connecticut, said she has several people, including other bloggers, assisting her in searching the files.

They are conducting their probe through Google and reverse phone directory searches. She said they will check any information they find, and will also publish the names of Democrats if they find any.

Jennifer Stoddart is a dedicated public servant who has spent years -- first working for the province of Quebec, and since 2003 as the federal privacy commissioner -- trying to protect Canadians' personal information from prying governments and greedy businesses. A lawyer by trade, she has impeccable qualifications for the job, with a strong background in constitutional law and human rights.

But there's a point to be made about the type of highly confidential data that can be obtained by anyone with an Internet connection and a credit card, and Stoddart has the misfortune of being the perfect illustration. Not that she's pleased about it. Her eyes widen as she recognizes what has just been dropped on the conference table in her downtown Ottawa office -- detailed lists of the phone calls made from her Montreal home,

When police are investigating a crime and want phone records, they must seek a court order. Recent commissions of inquiry, like Justice John Gomery's probe of Adscam or the investigation into the computer leasing fiasco at Toronto city hall, had to issue subpoenas to compel telecom companies to share such data. Government efforts to expand their phone monitoring powers as part of the war on terror are being fought tooth and nail by privacy and civil liberties organizations. Most Canadians consider their call records privileged information, and the courts have backed them up time and time again.

Yet Maclean's was able to purchase the privacy commissioner's phone logs online from a U.S. data broker, no questions asked. For about US$200 per order, Locatecell.com delivered months of long-distance records from her Bell Canada home and cottage accounts. They were also able to access her Telus Mobility cellphone call logs for October -- a monthly bill she probably hadn't even received at the time. And all the Internet requests were turned around in a matter of hours.(In a test run, the company was also able to obtain the cell records of a senior Maclean's editor from Fido, a division of Rogers, the company that owns this magazine.)Reverse phone number lookup engines on federal government and phone company websites provided the identities of many of the people Stoddart called, or who called her. On Sept. 15, for example, there was a call from her Montreal home to a relative in Frelighsburgh, Que. On Oct. 15, she called the house of one of her communications advisers from her cellphone. And on Oct. 27, she twice called the desk of another. While many of the numbers on the bills were cellphones or unlisted, anyone looking to fill in the blanks would only have to call until they hit voicemail recordings.

Confidential phone records are just the latest breach in the levee of government laws and corporate policies intended to protect private and personal data. Abuses -- whether it is medical records being scattered about a Toronto street as "garbage" for a film shoot, or Edmonton police running the names of pesky reporters and lawyers -- are reported almost every week. And in the wired world, almost anything is available for a price. A British teen recently tracked down his sperm-donor father using his own DNA and two different for-hire databases.

Many of the same websites that offer call records advertise even more invasive services like "personality profiles," complete with sexual preferences, names of exes, and gossip from neighbours. Or email and instant messenger traces that will provide the name of the person who owns the account, and their location, sometimes down to the street they live on. While some of the sites demand a signed release from the person being sought for items like credit reports and driver's records, the "verification" process wouldn't be much of an impediment for anyone willing to commit some garden-variety forgery.

Stoddart, whose office website offers tips to foil those trying to access or steal personal information -- including the prompt removal of incoming mail from your mailbox and shredding those pre-approved credit card applications -- was not a particularly easy catch. Despite her years in the public eye, and the numerous interviews she has given to journalists, there was little on the record beyond her professional qualifications. No one Maclean's contacted had her cellphone number, knew her home address, or even basic family information like the name of her spouse. "I've always been fairly mistrustful of people," she says. "If people want my personal data, I want to know why." Nonetheless, a thorough Internet search with Google yielded enough bits and pieces of information to start the process rolling.

Although Locatecell and other data brokers that Maclean's contacted claim to be able to find someone's cell number with simply a name and address, they failed in the privacy commissioner's case.(Locatecell did, however, provide the cellphones of four other Jennifer Stoddarts across the country.)But they were able to quickly provide long distance records from her home, when furnished with the name, address and Stoddart's date of birth -- obtained from publicly available property deed and mortgage papers in Montreal. Those phone records showed numerous calls to the townships chalet, listed under her husband's name. By obtaining call records for that number and cross-referencing, Maclean's was able to identify Stoddart's Ottawa cellphone. Armed with the actual number, Locatecell obtained her Telus Mobility records in a matter of hours.

As that proves, even the most cautious people are vulnerable if someone cares to expend the effort and money. What might be even scarier, as information flows faster and faster, is that no one -- governments, industry, federal and provincial privacy commissioners -- really seems to know how to hold back the tide.

Online data brokers have been selling Canadian and U.S. phone records for at least three years, and haven't been shy about advertising the fact. By the count of one American privacy group, there are more than 40 websites like Locatecell vying for your snooping business. But that's not something that anyone in the highly competitive telecom industry has been warning their customers about. Or apparently doing much to stop.

Mark Langton, a Telus Mobility spokesman, says the company was aware that these data brokers existed, but had no idea about his company's own vulnerability. A "full-court press" investigation into the security breach is underway, says Langton, and new countermeasures will soon be put in place, though he declined to specify what. The company also refused comment on whether it plans to add extra security measures for its sensitive government clients. Rogers Wireless spokesmen say they learned of the problem from a U.S. newspaper article this past summer, but also decline to reveal what specific steps, if any, the company is taking to deal with the issue. "Criminal elements will continually refine their methodology to get around systems," says Dawn Hunt, Rogers' vice-president of government and inter-carrier relations. "We're trying to keep ahead of them." A Bell Canada executive says the company was unaware that such a security threat existed until Maclean's brought it to its attention, but now intends to quickly tighten its procedures. "As we get more details, we'll be all over this," says David Elder, Bell's vice-president of regulatory law. "We will be investigating this and we will not hesitate to prosecute, where applicable."

A complicating factor is that no one seems to be sure exactly how the data brokers are getting their information. One theory is that they have an inside connection. Another is that they are hacking online customer accounts. The most likely explanation is that they simply call up and ask for it. Phone companies, it seems, are rather easily duped. If a caller posing as a customer furnishes them with the right name, number and address -- sometimes they will also ask for a postal code or date of birth -- they will take that person at their word.(The misrepresentation and trickery apparently works with some cellphone owners as well. Stoddart reports that someone, presumably an agent for one of the data brokers, recently called her Montreal home claiming to be a phone company representative, and demanded her cellphone number. Her son refused to provide it, despite threats that his mother's service would be cut off.)Locatecell did not respond to Maclean's requests for an interview.

Just what Canadian authorities can do about the problem is unclear. The databrokers are ensconced south of the border, outside of their legal jurisdiction. And they are often hard to pin down -- Locatecell, which is owned by a Tennessee company, Data Find Solutions Inc., operates out of Florida, with a North Carolina phone number. As Stoddart lamented in her own annual report to Parliament earlier this fall, "privacy threats seem to be multiplying like a bad virus, threatening to overwhelm us." The increasing transborder flow of information from government and business is one of the biggest challenges, she added, because it takes data out from under the umbrella of Canadian law into "a legal vacuum." And while the phone companies' disclosure of these records violates the privacy law that covers corporations -- the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act(PIPEDA)says that such information cannot be disclosed without the express consent of the consumer, or a court order -- that is not a guarantee that any substantive action will be taken against them. Unlike many of her provincial counterparts, the federal privacy commissioner functions like an ombudsman, seeking to settle disputes rather than punish offenders. Her rulings are not legally binding(although she can seek to have them made so in Federal Court), and in most cases don't even identify the transgressors by name.

Michael Geist, a University of Ottawa law professor who specializes in privacy issues, says Canadian corporations have been treated with kid gloves since PIPEDA came into force in 2000. "There's a great reluctance to name names, or launch audits or take anything to the Federal Court," he says. Part of the problem is the government's reluctance to strengthen the laws or see the boat rocked, he says. Another factor is the privacy commissioner's relatively meager $11-million-a-year budget -- a legacy of the expense account scandal that enveloped Stoddart's predecessor, George Radwanski. "People in that office are very committed to the job, but it's clear they feel they are swimming against the tide," says Geist.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which regulates telecom companies, has a little more power to punish privacy breaches -- its rulings have the force of law. But the maximum fine for a corporation's first offence is $50,000 -- not much of a deterrent when you consider the multi-million-dollar penalties handed down by its American counterpart, the Federal Communications Commission.(Bell recently filed a brief with an Industry Canada telecom review panel arguing that the CRTC should get out of that aspect of the business altogether and leave such matters to the privacy commissioner.)On very rare occasions, Canadian police will get involved in a privacy issue, but only if the breach results in a serious crime -- like the 2002 case of the Quebec government employee accused of helping the Bandidos motorcycle gang plan hits by providing them with the driver's licences of rival Hells Angels.

Rooting out the problem in the United States, which doesn't have national privacy laws like Canada, might be even more difficult since it's not clear that the practice of scooping other people's phone records is actually illegal. Wireless and land-line phone companies fall under different regulatory regimes. And a couple of decades of mergers, acquisitions and rapid cellphone growth has created a landscape where no one is sure exactly who is in charge. "It's a mess, a complete hodgepodge," says Chris Hoofnagle, West Coast director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center(EPIC), a public interest watchdog. EPIC recently filed complaints with the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission, seeking to force the telecom industry to tighten up its internal policies and prevent data brokers from obtaining customer bills. The response from the phone companies has been "openly hostile," says Hoofnagle. "They say it's not really a problem, and it can be dealt with in other ways."

To date, only one carrier, Verizon Wireless, has gone after the data brokers, filing a civil suit against a different Tennessee company, Source Resources, alleging fraud and civil conspiracy. The suit was settled in September with the online service agreeing to stop the practice and provide details about its methods. On the legislative side, Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, vowed to introduce a bill to criminalize the cellphone data black market, and create a special unit in the FTC to tackle the problem, but his efforts haven't progressed very far either. EPIC is trying to step up the pressure, and will soon launch a series of professional complaints against the data brokers' main clients -- lawyers. "We think in most cases that it's being used for infidelity investigations, in anticipation of divorce litigation," says Hoofnagle.

Regardless of what does or doesn't happen south of the border, Canada's privacy commissioner doesn't seem to be in the mood to let the matter drop. Last winter, she raised the issue of transborder data brokers with the FCC, and now she says she intends to do so again. And with her own purloined phone records in hand, Stoddart will be going after the phone companies. "This data originated in Canada," she notes. It's not just a matter of privacy, in the case of her cell records, it's also government security that has been compromised. "It's a stunning example," she says. "I think this calls for drastic action."

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THE US Congress will investigate revelations that a US spy agency has been tracking the phone records of tens of millions of Americans as President George W Bush insists that privacy rights are not under threat.

Members of Mr Bush's Republican party and opposition Democrats expressed alarm at the newspaper report that the National Security Agency (NSA) was building an unprecedented database of phone records with the help of three main telephone companies.

"The danger is privacy is being invaded. It's a program of big, big brother," he said.

Coming on the heels of recent revelations that Mr Bush had allowed eavesdropping on telephone calls to foreign destinations without court warrants, Mr Bush sought to head off possible political damage with a hastily arranged appearance before reporters.

Bush did not deny or confirm the existence of the world's largest database, which the USA Today newspaper said was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

But he asserted that the US intelligence community was not "mining or trolling" through the private lives of Americans, simply attempting "to intercept the communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organisations".

"After September 11, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack," Mr Bush said at the White House.

"If al-Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying," he said.

Mr Bush sought to reassure the public that "the privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected" under the anti-terrorism programs.

Democrats though seized on the report as further proof that the Bush administration was flouting civil liberties under a veil of secrecy.

"We are on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees on unreasonable search and seizure," Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein said.

Several lawmakers predicted the new disclosures would complicate confirmation hearings next week for Gen. Michael V. Hayden, formerly the head of the N.S.A., as the president's nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency.

One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. But the official said the call records were used for the limited purpose of tracing regular contacts of "known bad guys."

"To perform such traces," the official said, "you'd have to have all the calls or most of them. But you wouldn't be interested in the vast majority of them."

The New York Times first reported in December that the president had authorized the N.S.A. to conduct eavesdropping without warrants.

The Times also reported in December that the agency had gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to get access to records of vast amounts of domestic and international phone calls and e-mail messages.

The agency analyzes communications patterns, the report said, and looks for evidence of terrorist activity at home and abroad.

The USA Today article on Thursday went further, saying that the N.S.A. had created an enormous database of all calls made by customers of the three phone companies in an effort to compile a log of "every call ever made" within this country. The report said one large phone company, Qwest, had refused to cooperate with the N.S.A. because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Some Republicans, including Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended the N.S.A.'s activities and denounced the disclosure. Mr. Hoekstra said the report "threatens to undermine our nation's safety."

"Rather than allow our intelligence professionals to maintain a laser focus on the terrorists, we are once again mired in a debate about what our intelligence community may or may not be doing," he said.

But many Democrats and civil liberties advocates said they were disturbed by the report, invoking images of Big Brother and announcing legislation aimed at reining in the N.S.A.'s domestic operations. Fifty-two members of Congress asked the president to name a special counsel to investigate the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance programs.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee, said the reported data-mining activities raised serious constitutional questions. He said he planned to seek the testimony of telephone company executives.

The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said he wanted more information on the program because "I am not sure why it would be necessary to keep and have that kind of information."

Mr. Bush did not directly confirm or deny the existence of the N.S.A. operation but said that "as a general matter every time sensitive intelligence is leaked it hurts our ability to defeat this enemy."

Seeking to distinguish call-tracing operations from eavesdropping, the president said that "the government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval."

The phone records include numbers called, time, date and direction of calls and other details but not the words spoken, telecommunications experts said. Customers' names and addresses are not included in the companies' call records, though they could be cross-referenced to obtain personal data.

General Hayden, making rounds at the Capitol to seek support for his confirmation as C.I.A. director, did not discuss the report but defended his former agency. "Everything that N.S.A. does is lawful and very carefully done," General Hayden said.

The law on data-mining activities is murky, and legal analysts were divided Thursday on the question of whether the N.S.A.'s tracing and analysis of huge streams of American communications data would require the agency to use subpoenas or court warrants.

Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said, "If they don't get a court order, it's a crime." She said that while the F.B.I. might be able to get access to phone collection databases by using an administrative subpoena, her reading of federal law was that the N.S.A. would be banned from doing so without court approval.

But another expert on the law of electronic surveillance, Kenneth C. Bass III, said that if access to the call database was granted in response to a national security letter issued by the government, "it would probably not be illegal, but it would be very troubling."

"The concept of the N.S.A. having near-real-time access to information about every call made in the country is chilling," said Mr. Bass, former counsel for intelligence policy at the Justice Department. He said the phone records program resembled Total Information Awareness, a Pentagon data-mining program shut down by Congress in 2003 after a public outcry.

The N.S.A. refused to discuss the report, but said in a statement that it "takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth all issued statements saying they had followed the law in protecting customers' privacy but would not discuss details of the report.

"AT&T has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy," said Selim Bingol, a company spokesman. "We also have an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare."

Mr. Specter said in an interview that he would press for information on the operations of the N.S.A. program to determine its legality.

"I don't think we can really make a judgment on whether warrants would be necessary until we know a lot more about the program," he said.

One central question is whether the N.S.A. uses its analysis of phone call patterns to select people in the United States whose phone calls and e-mail messages are monitored without warrants. The Times has reported that the agency is believed to have eavesdropped on the international communications of about 400 to 500 people at a time within the United States and of thousands of people since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Democrats said they would use the new disclosures to push for more answers from General Hayden at his confirmation hearing, set for May 18.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, predicted "a major Constitutional confrontation on Fourth Amendment guarantees of unreasonable search and seizure" and said the new disclosures presented "a growing impediment to the confirmation of General Hayden." Some members of Congress also reacted angrily to the news that the ethics office at the Justice Department had been refused the security clearances necessary to conduct a planned investigation of department lawyers who approved N.S.A.'s eavesdropping.

Mr. Specter called the denial of clearances to the department's own investigators "incomprehensible" and said he and other senators would ask that the clearances be granted to employees of the department's Office of Professional Responsibility.

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Even if telephone companies turn over customers' phone records to the government, customers would likely never be able to find out for sure and would have little recourse in any event.

Most telephone carriers would not comment on reports Thursday that AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. had complied with the National Security Agency's requests for customers' call records. Those that did kept their remarks ambiguous and short.

AT&T and Verizon are Washington state's largest long-distance carriers. New York-based Verizon also is the second-largest local-call

About 80 percent of Washington residents rely on Qwest for local telephone service. USA Today, quoting unnamed sources, said the Denver-based company refused to give the government the records because it was uneasy about handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest officials declined to comment Thursday.

CenturyTel, which provides local service to about 185,000 customers, the third-largest provider in the state, has provided a tiny amount of telephone records to authorities, mostly in legal requests involving divorce and drug and other law enforcement cases, said Jacquie Goodwill, a spokeswoman for the firm's Washington and Oregon operations.

"We strictly follow the FCC's rules, and we took precautions to not share customer information improperly," Goodwill said.

In 2005, the Louisiana-based company complied with about 1,500 requests for phone records, and 15 percent were "security related," though she couldn't say whether the NSA had requested any data.

T-Mobile hasn't provided the NSA any access to communications or customer records, said spokesman Peter Dobrow. The Bellevue-based company has 22.7 million customers.

Verizon regional spokesman Kevin Laverty said "a lot" of customers have been calling Verizon inquiring about the company's decision to turn over records. But, he said, "our customer-contact representatives have no means of knowing whether or not a customer's number is being monitored since that is the purview of law enforcement and Verizon security personnel."

Sprint Nextel could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Comcast Corp. said it requires "valid, appropriate legal process such as a subpoena, court order or search warrant, in response to all requests for customer information."

The latest revelations touched off a furor on Capitol Hill. Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) said he would summon the phone companies before his committee "to find out exactly what is going on." The Senate is also due to hold hearings on the nomination of Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former NSA director who had overseen the wiretapping program, to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, said the White House told him that "telephone customers' names, addresses and other personal information have not been handed over to the NSA as part of this program." He added that the program under discussion doesn't involve listening to or recording anyone's conversations, but rather "using the data to analyze calling patterns."

Congressional criticism was fueled in part by a decision by a Justice Department office to end its investigation into the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program because it had been denied the security clearances needed to carry out the inquiry. That program, disclosed in December by the New York Times, involved intercepting, without a court order, communications between international and U.S. parties in which one or both of the parties was suspected of being a terrorist threat.

Among the local phone giants that handle the vast majority of all calls, only Qwest Communications International Inc. balked at cooperating with NSA requests to turn over call data without a warrant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Qwest, Denver, is far smaller than the other regional phone companies. Despite a history of doing classified work for the government, Qwest was uncomfortable with several aspects of the government's request, including the lack of warrants and the NSA's refusal to seek approval from a special national security-related court, a person familiar with the situation said.

Without knowing the precise nature of what the NSA is doing, some legal experts say the administration appears to be operating in a fuzzy area about what legal permission is required for sifting through data, especially if the data don't include personal information or the actual content of phone calls or emails.

Former AT&T engineers and law-enforcement officials involved in electronic surveillance say the NSA is likely to be monitoring what is known in the intelligence community as signals traffic -- the data that accompany every phone call or email.

Among other things, signals traffic reveals who is contacting whom and what circuit they are communicating over. Every time a phone call is placed or attempted or an email is sent, a record is generated. There is an international protocol for this information, called Signaling System 7, which makes it easier to track.

AT&T, for example, collects this kind of detail in two massive databases, and manages it with a system it calls Daytona. One database, dubbed "Hawkeye," contains records of nearly every telephone call made over AT&T's domestic network in the last five years, while another called "Aurora" performs a similar function for email traffic.

Law-enforcement officials routinely use what is known as "pen registers" and "trap and trace devices" to collect information about incoming and outgoing calls to and from a specific phone number. While a court order is required to get such information, the threshold is a lot lower than obtaining an order to actively listen to a call. Given the broader nature of the NSA terrorist-surveillance program, obtaining individual court approvals would be an enormous task, some legal experts say, and not entirely necessary.

"This is a new area that we've never seen before," says Roscoe Howard, former U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. "I can't point to anything that would say the government can't do this or would be breaking the law."

Mr. Howard says the Fourth Amendment's protection from unreasonable seizures applies a specific test: whether that information would be available to a third party. And in the case of call-detail records, the phone company collecting them would qualify as the third party, and thus the government would be allowed to have access to whatever it did, says Mr. Howard.

In the Cold War era, the NSA used supercomputers, listening posts and various devices to glean information about Soviet plans and military movements.

But the explosion in phone and email traffic in the last decade, coupled with a more diffuse threat to the country's security, has made traditional eavesdropping cumbersome and ineffective, say government officials. The upshot: The government must cast a much broader net that covers the numerous communications devices an individual might use, and must look for patterns and other clues that might link possible terrorists.

These days, it is possible for phone companies to cull a list of all calls made from the 310-area code in Los Angeles to Islamabad at noon on a certain day within minutes.

AT&T, for instance, has used its Daytona system since about 2000 to track billions of details about its customers' phone calls and emails sent over its fiber-optic network. AT&T accumulates the data for verifying customer charges and for tailoring marketing efforts to their calling patterns.

However, according to a lawsuit filed against AT&T on behalf of its customers in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, the federal government used the powerful technology in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks for a different purpose: to collect phone records without court authorization.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group that works on protecting privacy and other rights in the digital world, alleges in the lawsuit that the company allowed the NSA to use the Daytona system as part of its warrantless surveillance program. Evidence has emerged in that case that suggests the telecommunications companies provided the government broad access to their networks and the data they collect.

Retired AT&T technician Mark Klein says he observed the NSA setting up a secret room at the company's San Francisco office. The NSA's room was adjacent to a switching room where public phone calls are routed, he says. Mr. Klein says he learned while on the job that fiber-optic cables from the NSA's room tapped into AT&T's WorldNet Internet network. He says the NSA's room contained traffic-analyzer technology that telecommunications engineers say is used by intelligence agencies to search through large amounts of data for specific phone numbers or email addresses.

Mr. Klein's assertions were contained in a statement released by his lawyer. Mr. Klein has provided detailed information to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has filed it under seal with the court, his lawyer says.

AT&T has motioned to have the case dismissed. The company argues, among other things, that even if the allegations are true, Congress and the courts have conferred blanket immunity from such lawsuits on telecommunications companies responding to requests for assistance from high levels of government.

Yesterday, AT&T said it "has a long history of vigorously protecting customer privacy." The company also said it has "an obligation to assist law enforcement and other government agencies responsible for protecting the public welfare, whether it be an individual or the security interests of the entire nation."

There is no disputing that the sheer volume of modern digital communications has made surveillance more difficult. Gen. Hayden, the former NSA director, said in January that intelligence officials no longer have the benefit of knowing exactly where to listen for trouble.

"Gone [are] the days when signals of interest -- that's what NSA calls the things they want to copy...went along some dedicated microwave link between strategic rocket forces headquarters in Moscow and some [inter-continental ballistic missile] in western Siberia," Gen. Hayden said. "By the late '90s, what NSA calls targeted communications -- things like al Qaeda communications -- coexisted out there in a great global web with your phone calls and my emails."

Gen. Hayden said in January that the government isn't trolling through the phone conversations of the masses looking for words such as "jihad."

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The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.

The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.

Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.

The NSA's domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA's efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. "In other words," Bush explained, "one end of the communication must be outside the United States."

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

The government is collecting "external" data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting "internals," a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it's been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for "social network analysis," the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.

Carriers uniquely positioned

AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation's three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.

The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.

Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency."

In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named "Shamrock," led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.

Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.

Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of "data mining" — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.

Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn't necessary for government data-mining operations. "FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining," said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.

The caveat, he said, is that "personal identifiers" — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can't be included as part of the search. "That requires an additional level of probable cause," he said.

The usefulness of the NSA's domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.

The NSA's domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer's calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.

Ma Bell's bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. "No court order, no customer information — period. That's how it was for decades," he said.

The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers' calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.

The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation's top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of "violation." In practice, that means a single "violation" could cover one customer or 1 million.

In the case of the NSA's international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.

Companies approached

The NSA's domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation's biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.

The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their "call-detail records," a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation's calling habits.

The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.

With that, the NSA's domestic program began in earnest.

AT&T, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: "We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law."

In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: "BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority."

Verizon, the USA's No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T, gave this statement: "We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers' privacy."

Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: "We can't talk about this. It's a classified situation."

In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales' reply: "I wouldn't rule it out." His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority.

Similarities in programs

The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA's procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation's citizens.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would not confirm the existence of the program. In a statement, he said, "I can say generally, however, that our subcommittee has been fully briefed on all aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. ... I remain convinced that the program authorized by the president is lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks."

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.

One company differs

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as "product" in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

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George Bush tried desperately yesterday to defuse the news that the three biggest telephone firms in the US provided the National Security Agency with the records of billions of calls made by Americans.

The revelation that the warrantless wiretapping authorised by President Bush was far more sweeping than the administration has admitted could derail the confirmation of Michael Hayden, a former director of the agency, as new CIA chief.

Covered in a report by the paper USA Today, the story also reopens questions about whether Mr Bush acted illegally in authorising taps on Americans without court oversight. USA Today reported that since the September 2001 terror attacks, AT&T Corp, Verizon Communications Inc, and BellSouth Corp had been providing the agency with detailed records of the calls made by their 200 million customers, both international and domestic.

Only one company, Qwest Corporation, which operates in 14 western states, refused to help the agency. It said it had concerns about the legality of the taps.

The disclosure of such a vast exercise would appear to refute repeated claims by Mr Bush, and both the attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, and General Hayden, that the programme to eavesdrop on Americans' phone calls and emails without oversight by the courts was narrowly targeted at al-Qaida networks, and was limited in scope.

Yesterday Mr Bush moved swiftly to try to reverse that impression, appearing on television to assert that the wiretapping was legal and did not intrude on the privacy of ordinary Americans. "We are not mining or trawling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on al-Qaida and their known affiliates," he said. But he did not deny USA Today's report.

However on Capitol Hill the article was met with outrage from Republican and Democratic members of Congress. "The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers - how does that fit into following the enemy?" Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator from South Carolina, told Fox television.

Yesterday the White House abruptly cancelled two meetings between Gen Hayden and senators scheduled in preparation for his confirmation hearings.

Gen Hayden had already been facing opposition from some senators to his nomination as head of the CIA, because a military man would then be in charge of the premier civilian spy agency, and because he was the architect of the warrantless taps as a former director of the National Security Agency.

Following yesterday's revelations, he faces even greater scrutiny, with the Republican chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, Arlen Specter, saying he would call executives from the phone companies to testify on the legality of the agency taps.

Patrick Leahy, a Democrat on the committee, said: "Shame on us for being so willing to rubber-stamp everything the [US] administration does."

Yesterday's story boosted those who say Mr Bush's administration failed to be forthcoming about the surveillance programme. A justice department ethics inquiry into the government lawyers who approved the eavesdropping was shut down after the investigators were denied security clearance, the New York Times reported yesterday.

Backstory

Most Americans had probably not even heard of the super-secretive National Security Agency until December last year when the New York Times reported, in a Pulitzer-prize winning story, that President Bush had authorised the agency to eavesdrop - without a warrant or court oversight - on the international telephone calls and emails of Americans. But the story of the NSA wiretaps has since become a symbol of the Bush administration's expansion of presidential powers during its war on terror. The White House claims that the US constitution gives the president the power to allow the NSA to circumvent legal oversight. Others, including Republican senators, argue that the warrantless wiretaps were illegal.

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A U.S. House committee investigating the black market sale of telephone numbers wants records from a telecommunications company owned by a Loveland lawmaker.

Rep. Jim Welker said Tuesday he has no idea why the feds want to look at his records.

"We've done nothing illegal," said Welker, a Republican. "We provide toll-free numbers for marketing and we work with law enforcement when they need information."

Former Attorney General Ken Salazar successfully sued UCC in 2000, saying it illegally trapped phone numbers from debtors and turned them over to collection agencies.

On its Web site Tuesday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce posted a letter that it sent to Welker seeking detailed data on how his business operates.

The probe comes at a time when Welker is under fire in the legislature for forwarding a racially charged e-mail about black Hurricane Katrina victims.

UCC is one of at least 15 businesses nationwide under scrutiny by the House committee as it investigates the sale of phone records and other sensitive data amid growing concerns about identity theft.

The investigation came after reports that for $100, customers can go on the Internet and buy billing records of any cell-phone customer.

Another Colorado company, Worldwide Investigations Inc., of Denver, received a similar request for its records last month.

A spokesman for the congressional committee did not respond to questions on whether it had specific information that led it to Welker's company or whether it was targeting information firms in general.

"It is our understanding that UCC owns and operates a Web site that, among other things, is an Internet 'data broker,' " the committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, wrote Welker.

"According to numerous press reports, many data- broker Web sites acquire and sell consumers' personal cell phone records and other personal data, without the knowledge or consent of the owners of those cell phone numbers.

"Even cell phone roaming records are being sold, giving purchasers not only the numbers called, and their dates and times, but also the city and state from which those mobile calls were made."

On its Web site, Universal notes it helps investigators, finance companies and "recovery professionals" find fast and accurate information in part by using a "trap line" to capture phone numbers.

"Our Web interface will allow for a complete reverse search to translate phone numbers into addresses," the Web site says.

"Many investigators leave the trap line as a call-back number with the friends, relatives, and associates of those suspects they are trying to locate. When the suspect returns the call, investigators can immediately speak with the caller or simply drop the caller into a voice mail box."

The Web site also says that customers are to "use these services in a legal manner and adhere to all regulatory guidelines and professional standards."

"UCC does not share information between customers or with any third parties except in cases where required by law," the company disclaimer says.

Welker has until April 14 to to turn over the records.

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Internet mapping services are powerful and simple: Type a phone number into Google or other sites for a map with door-to-door directions. Finding someone has never been easier.

Now those resources are provoking a backlash. Spooked people worried about stalkers or worse are striking their particulars from phone and Internet listings.

Count Sonjia Kenya among them.

"I was appalled and petrified as a single woman living in New York," Kenya said. She vows never again to give her phone number to potential suitors.

Many home addresses are attainable through a variety of public records and telephone listings. As well, reverse directories that let someone look up an address by phone number have been available at libraries or for sale commercially for years.

But many Internet sites that gather that kind of data now make it possible for fast, do-it-yourself desktop sleuthing, some for free and some for a fee.

Search engine provider Google Inc. added a phone number-map lookup feature more than two years ago.

There's also FindPeople.com, WhitePages.com and Switchboard.com, among others. If the sites don't have a direct link to a map, users can go on their own to such free sites as Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, or Microsoft Corp.'s MapPoint. Tens of millions of people use those mapping services each month to help them get places.

Navigation Technologies Corp., which supplies the digital roadmaps used by those Web sites, has seen revenue more than double in three years, to $165.8 million in 2002. It is expected to top $200 million this year.

The Internet features are convenient tools for everyone, whether to look up a long lost friend or relative -- or with malicious intent.

Earlier this month, Steven Sutcliffe of Manchester, New Hampshire, who had been fired by Global Crossing Ltd., was convicted of identity theft and use of the Internet to threaten company executives. He had created a Web site that included employees' Social Security numbers and maps to some of their homes. Sutcliffe, who represented himself during the final weeks of trial, had told the jury he "was just publishing information."

An animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, has posted on its Web site point-and-click map listings, including the home addresses of executives and affiliates of England's Huntingdon Life Sciences Ltd. The tactic is legal under free-speech laws but has coincided with a rise in protests outside the homes of people connected to Huntingdon, prompting dozens of firms to sever their ties with the research lab.

By all accounts, however, the popularity of Internet maps has more to do with benefits than sinister uses.

Online maps and driving directions have become a must-have for business Web sites as more consumers treat the Internet as an information appliance, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"For a lot of people now, especially those with broadband connections, the first place they go to for information is online," Rainie said. "But people are still warming up to the idea that lots of information about them is online."

In a 2002 survey, Pew found that one in four Internet users have typed their own names into a search engine to see what information about them is on the Web. And a quarter of those people were surprised by how much data about them was online, Rainie said.

Privacy concerns have led a "small number" of people to request removal from the Google phone number-mapping feature, said Google spokesman David Krane. He would not say how many have done so.

After Kenya got an e-mail alerting her to the feature, she immediately filled out the Google form to get delisted.

But then Kenya turned around and used the same tool and other online features to check on a man who had asked her out.

"I'm upset that it intrudes my privacy," said Kenya. "But at the same time, I'm trying to get as much information as I can from the Internet."

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Hillary Rodham Clinton's early job as health care policymaker gave way during the remainder of her years as first lady to a more traditional, restricted role, according to thousands of pages of calendars outlining her activities in the White House.

While her influence clearly waned after the collapse of a national health care initiative, Clinton became part of the public face of her husband's administration, on issues from foreign policy to domestic legislation.

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While many public officials are hesitant to share information about what the government is doing, what many Americans don't realize is that the business of public officials is highly accessible, especially when it comes to how taxpayers' dollars are spent.

To raise such awareness, the Daily News is participating in Sunshine Week, an annual project aimed at creating awareness about freedom of information and government secrecy.

The newspaper joined media outlets across the country to take part in Sunshine Week, one of almost 40 participants in the state. Sunshine Week, an initiative organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is designed to highlight the need for open dialogue between government and the public.

On Feb. 20, officials from Natick to Franklin were given public records requests for their town-issued cell phone bills. State law allows recipients 10 days to fulfill public record requests.

The results from each local town varied.

Of the seven officials given requests, Natick Town Administrator Martha White was the only one who did not comply with the state law. White was handed the public records request in person Feb. 20.

"We'll deal with it," she said, after receiving the letter. At press time, the cell phone bills were not received.

Milford Superintendent Robert Tremblay was the most prompt in his response, returning complete bills within 24 hours of the request. The documents were provided free of charge.

Tremblay was among the few who agreed to provide complete number-by-number cell phone bills. Most calls appeared brief and local, although a few calls were placed to Montreal. Each month, his bill totaled around $70.

Hopkinton Town Manager Anthony Troiano consulted with the town's attorney and police chief before responding to the request.

"People have a right to privacy if they call my phone," said Troiano, explaining his wish to submit only the cover pages of each bill.

Troiano offered to provide complete bills, but said he needed to skim each bill and strike through any numbers he deemed "private." Town counsel would also have to review the work, a job Troiano described as costly.

"You could pay a lot of money for nothing," Troiano said. "I have nothing to hide."

The town manager was surprised others had provided complete bills.

Troiano provided general bill information free of charge. The information was two days past the state mandate because a mail snafu caused a short delay. His bill totaled around $55 each month.

Franklin Police Chief Stephen Williams also refused to provide complete bills.

Franklin Town Attorney Mark Cerel wrote a letter on Williams' behalf, explaining he would provide general billings, but not an itemized record.

"Public safety and security and personal privacy interests preclude making any of the records available," wrote Cerel. "There is a significant risk that he would inadvertently disclose an exempt telephone number in reviewing a high volume of calls, thereby creating a public safety and/or security risk or a personal privacy violation."

The town later provided general billings of all townwide-issued cell phones, which includes Williams' phone, free of charge. Franklin pays about $3,000 each month for all town employees' cell phones.

Milford Town Administrator Louis Celozzi provided his two most recent bills, explaining he received a town-issued cell phone just recently.

"This is funny. I'm the last one to have a cell phone, I just got one a month ago," Celozzi said upon receiving the request.

The two bills included a summary and invoice with each dialed and received call. Celozzi received a few lengthy calls from a local number, which could not be determined. The bills cost between $50 and $80.

Framingham Town Manager Julio Suso did not question the records request; however, he sent just invoice summaries for the past three month's bills. His cell phone plan cost the town about $62 per month.

Marlborough Mayor Nancy Stevens provided bills, complete with a number-by-number breakdown, from November 2007 to February 2008.

Most of Stevens' calls appeared local, although several calls to New Jersey were placed throughout the three-month span. The bills appeared to cost around $200 each month, with a 22 percent business discount.

According to Massachusetts state law, "every document, paper, record, map, photograph, etc., that is made or received by a government entity or employee is presumed to be public record."

All citizens are granted access to any of these records, which include daily police logs and official's salary and contract records.

Jan. 20--Your mobile phone won't likely become a "sell" phone, experts said, contrary to a widely circulating e-mail that claims telemarketers will soon start calling cellular customers to pitch products and services.

Telemarketers aren't likely to do so because federal law restricts the practice, experts said.

What may be fueling concerns over the privacy of cell-phone numbers is that the wireless industry is developing a cell-phone directory. But inclusion in the directory would be voluntary, telecommunications industry executives said; a cell-phone user would have to choose to be in it.