Thursday, May 11th, 2006...3:30 pm
Qwest Refuses to Cooperate with Dragnet
I am not inclined to like Qwest. Not only are they the monopolistic “man” keeping us down, but they are owned by the media-shy Philip Anschutz, who is an owner of DC United. Anyone that keeps Freddy Adu and Alecko Eskandarian gainfully employed is pretty low on my list.
But, as it turns out, they did a decent, honorable, and yes, patriotic thing. They refused to turn over customer usage details to the National Security Agency. This means that despite the fact that tens of millions of Americans have their phone calls logged in an NSA database (every one of these customers leading a dangerous al-Quaeda cell, no doubt), Qwest customers were free from this invasion of privacy.
As I hear more about this, it ticks me off more and more. It turns out that these other companies were paid, yes paid, for these records. No warrant or appeal to patriotism there, just raw greed. Qwest, on the other hand, stood fast even though they were threatened with the loss of government contracts.
R-Cubed kudos to Qwest.
At what point will people actually get angry about this sort of thing?
10 Comments
May 11th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
I worked at Qwest (and actually left because of the way they treated their customers) during Nacchio’s reign as CEO and while I do blame him for destroying my manager’s (who I happened to like) retirement and subsequent lay off right before she found out she was ill, I have to say, he did the right thing this one and only time.
His replacement Dick Notebaert has been decent enough I suppose and actually ended the talks with the NSA.
By the way you suck for posting about this before I had a chance to. Now I have to come up with another topic.
May 11th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
I am angry as well about the lack of an investigation or any other inquiry into the NSA spying that was illegally activated…and lied about…by our President. No one knows how far the President went into spying…and upon whom. Legal scholar colleagues debated this endlessly on my listserv and the only conclusion they had was that this is evidence of the Presidency gaining power and the Congress giving it up…and refusing to use its checks to punish the wrong-doing.
Now we only hear about reforms to the program to make it better…despite the fact that it is so clear that the President broke the law…and is not being punished.
May 11th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
Angry about it? If you’re Jon Kyl, you’re angry that the public knows about this.
May 11th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Yes, and the middle finger to Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth for cooperating with Bush NSA on this.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:16 pm
Our tax dollars being used. Yes, we are paying the phone companies to let the NSA spy on us.
Almost like a Twilight Zone episode.
Qwest has been ripping off customers for years. I nearly filed a lawsuit 10 years ago and created a case file but dropped it because I was too busy with other things.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:34 am
Yeah…I can imagine that Qwest didn’t want any MORE scrutiny…or maybe there was something in the records that the justice dept. would have liked to have seen.
May 12th, 2006 at 10:01 am
Oh…since he is not saying it…or can’t say it….and this is off topic.
Vote TED in LD28 For House Rep! I don’t know where to sign his petition or to give him clean dollars…but I would like to.
Maybe someone else can tell me?
May 12th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Call Ted up on the phone Kral…then demand to know where to send money or help.
Or get a blank form and fill it out with the pertinant information and give it to him the next time you see him.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Also Ted cannot talk about his campaign on this blog because it would be considered an inkind contribution since this blog is read by everyone of note in the state.
I do believe that the third blog could be used to talk about the race since I am the only person who reads it apparently.
May 12th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
I think it is a sad indicator of how bad things have become when a corporation gets kudos simply for doing the right thing. In any healthy poltical economy, it would be the expected standard of behavior, not the notable exception.
That said, I do feel a little better about paying my cellular bill this month.