Washington When Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants united in outrage last summer over the National Security Agencys unfettered spying, telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint whose customers are also the targets of secret government spying remained noticeably mum.

But now the phone companies are speaking up. In closed-door meetings with policymakers they are taking a less accommodating stance with government and rattling the historically tight bond between telecom and the surveillance community.

Its been extremely unusual for telecoms to resist any requests from the government, said software engineer Zaki Manian of Palo Alto, who advocates against mass government surveillance.

The telecom companies have a long history of providing raw data dumps to the government and typically taking some money in return and calling it a day, Manian said.

Technology companies typically comply with requests for information about individual users but resist demands for bulk data. But telecommunications companies share a connection with government unlike any other industry.

They have been tied to our national security agencies for all of their history, said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who was a special assistant to President Obama for science and technology policy.

Since the earliest days of wiretapping in the late 19th century, telephone companies have assisted law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For decades, a series of laws cemented the relationship.

But 2014 marks a pivotal moment for the telecom industry. White House policymakers are considering significant changes as public debate about surveillance heightens in the aftermath of NSA spying exposed by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The central pillar of Obamas plan to overhaul the surveillance programs calls for shifting storage of phone data from the government to telecom companies or an independent third party. But telecoms dont want that job.

Now phone industry executives are privately telling administration officials they dont like the idea of storing phone records gathered by the NSA because they dont want to become the governments data minders. Companies say they are wary of being forced to standardize their own data collection to conform to the NSAs needs.

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Telecoms Resist NSA Plan

By Marcy Gordon and Martha Mendoza

When Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants united in outrage last summer over the National Security Agency's unfettered spying, telecommunications giants such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint -whose customers are also the targets of secret government spying - remained noticeably mum.

But now the phone companies are speaking up. In closed-door meetings with policymakers they are taking a less accommodating stance with government and rattling the historically tight bond between telecom and the surveillance community.

"It's been extremely unusual for telecoms to resist any requests from the [US] government," says software engineer Zaki Manian of Palo Alto, who advocates against mass government surveillance.

"The telecom companies have a long history of providing raw data dumps to the government and typically taking some money in return and calling it a day," Manian says.

Technology companies typically comply with requests for information about individual users but resist demands for bulk data. But telecommunications companies share a connection with government unlike that of any other industry.

They "have been tied to our national security agencies for all of their history", says Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who was a special assistant to President Barack Obama for science, technology and innovation policy.

During World War II and for decades after, telegraph companies such as Western Union - which was controlled by AT&T - turned over copies of international telegrams originating in the US to the NSA and its predecessor agency. In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, government agents reviewed tens of thousands of telegrams each month under Project Shamrock, deemed by lawmakers to be the biggest intelligence-intercept operation in US history.

Since the earliest days of wiretapping in the late 19th century, telephone companies have assisted law enforcement and intelligence agencies. For decades, a series of laws cemented the relationship, including a 1994 wiretapping act that requires telecom companies to build networks that allow law enforcement to eavesdrop in real time.

But 2014 marks a pivotal moment for the telecom industry. White House policymakers are considering significant changes as public debate about surveillance heightens in the aftermath of NSA spying exposed by former agency contractor Edward Snowden.

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Telecoms switch sides on govt spying

Mr Zuckerberg was urging the telecoms industry at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to back his Internet.org initiative for basic online access to all, but he faced a barrage of questions about other issues including the NSA affair.

Despite his concerns, he said the situation was improving, presumably referring to Washingtons partial relaxation on how much internet companies were allowed to tell the public about what information they share with the NSA: Now I think the US government is getting there, he said.

Mr Zuckerberg, just days after buying the messaging app WhatsApp for 11bn, dismissed questions about further takeovers, such as another bid for Snapchat, saying: After youve bought a company for $16bn, youre probably done for a while.

He warned that efforts to connect the entire worlds population to the web are going way slower than most people imagine, as he urged the telecoms industry to back his Internet.org initiative for basic online access for all.

Mr Zuckerberg told the conference that it was crucial to encourage people in emerging markets to get web access, citing a Deloitte study that showed productivity can increase by up to 25 per cent.

The Facebook chief executive said this idea of connecting all of the world was a reason why he had bonded with Jan Koum, the founder of the messaging app WhatsApp, which Mr Zuckerberg bought last week for $19bn (11.4bn). He said mobile phone carriers should give cheap or free access to basic Internet services to connect the five billion people who are not yet online.

He admitted that would help Facebook to increase its profits eventually, but he maintained the social media giant would not break even on its investment in Internet.org for some time.

Mr Koum said he is aiming for two billion WhatsApp users in the near term.

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Mark Zuckerberg at MWC: NSA spying scandal is 'not awesome' but WhatsApp is