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kaszz writes:

Sprint was the only US telecomm company to counter request the NSA for the legal rationale to release telephone metadata. Sprint asked for legal justification when it received requests for its phone metadata in 2009.

Newly declassified documents show the dilemma faced by telecommunications companies when the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) came calling.

According to a story this week in the Washington Post, Sprint asked the NSA for legal justification when it received requests for phone metadata in 2009. Reportedly, it was the only telco to require a legal rationale. The documents related to previous occasions for which the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or FISA, had issued orders.

After the documents were presented, Sprint dropped its challenge and complied with the request.