Justice-Business Deal on Internet Shows Spy Law Struggle

The President was ready to pledge on national television that he would let communications companies disclose more than ever about secret US government data requests. Problem was: big Internet firms weren’t on board. And it was David O’Neil’s job to fix it, fast.

The night before President Barack Obama’s Jan. 17 speech, O’Neil, a Justice Department lawyer, and his boss, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, got on the phone with attorneys for five major technology companies. All five were suing the US government for permission to disclose the extent of those same classified government orders, which require them to hand over records of customers’ e-mails and Internet use. O’Neil and Cole got straight the point: the President and Attorney General wanted the government to be more transparent, and the companies should accept a deal and drop their suits, according to three government officials and two other people with direct knowledge of the negotiations who spoke to Bloomberg News. They all asked for anonymity to describe the private talks. It took 10 more days from that Jan. 16 call for O’Neil to reach a compromise with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Yahoo. The tale of how that compromise was reached -- on a comparatively straightforward issue -- foreshadowed the challenge ahead as the Obama administration, Congress and businesses now try to craft a new law to govern who stores and controls access to millions of records now kept by the National Security Agency.