Bush talks down phone records furore.

-- US President George W Bush has moved to quell a firestorm over his Government's secret collection of telephone records of tens of millions of private citizens, insisting they were all needed to "target Al Qaeda".

But the latest controversy has already spawned a major lawsuit against Verizon, one of the telephone companies involved, and members of Congress expressed unease over what they see as gradual erosion of privacy rights.

The lawsuit, filed in New York on Friday, seeks $US5 billion from Verizon in damages, alleging the company has broken the law by agreeing to provide the National Security Agency with telephone records of its clients.

The plaintiffs argue phone companies should not cooperate with the NSA that specialises in electronic espionage without a proper court warrant based on well-grounded "suspicion of terrorist activity or other criminal activity". --