Can Private Companies Helping the NSA Be Watchdogs, Too? Companies that secretly helped the government's secret anti-terrorism surveillance operations without requiring valid legal orders have found their reputations sullied, their billboards re-decorated and their lawyers busy fending off suits seeking billions in damages. Just ask AT&T. But given that the government's spooks will continue to rely on private companies -- especially telecoms -- to help with their secret intelligence efforts, could these companies actually serve as a watchdog protecting the country from intrusive, lawbreaking spying? Jon Michaels, an acting professor at UCLA Law School, thinks they could. The key, according to Michaels' article in the California Law Review, is making such companies tell the appropriate Congressional committees and inspectors general in regular reports when they transfer information about Americans to the government's spy agencies. Congress also much find a clear way to punish companies which cooperate informally and immunize those who follow legal orders. That should make telecoms resist the kind of handshake agreements like the ones that led the nation's largest telecoms to give the government billions of phone call records and to let the nation's spooks wiretap the internet inside the United States, Michaels argues....