Wednesday, May 17, 2006

How convenient: BellSouth/Verizon deny

CNN: BellSouth and AT&T were added to a class-action lawsuit against Verizon that alleges the companies illegally participated in a NSA domestic surveillance program. So, perhaps a denial of doing this is incredibly convenient, no? MSNBC: "Verizon on Tues joined fellow phone company BellSouth in denying key pts of a USA Today story that said the companies had provided records of millions of phone calls to the govt. Hmm... then why did Qwest say they refused the NSA request?: "An attorney for the former chief exec of Qwest on Friday lent support to USA Today’s story. He said the Denver company had been approached by the govt, but had denied the request for phone records because it appeared to violate privacy law. Qwest is a regional phone company with a substantial long-distance business. It was not clear if the govt’s request applied only to Qwest’s long-distance business. Verizon’s statement suggested that USA Today may have erred in not drawing a distinction between long-distance and local telephone calls. "Phone companies do not even make records of local calls in most cases because the vast majority of customers are not billed per call for local calls," Verizon said. Left Coaster wonders if the denials indicate something more sinister is afoot. At this pt, nothing sinister would shock me, especially after reading this at Daily Kos. Call me crazy, but Verizon and BellSouth have much to gain by denying the USA Today claim since 1000s of Americans (53% according to this Newsweek poll, and 85% according to this MSNBC live poll) DISapprove of the NSA data mining our phone calls. I have to wonder how many of those pissed off 1000s called them and told them they were switching to Qwest and/or were suing them? Yeh... I'd deny I did it, too.
Posted by Tina :: 12:53 AM :: 3 Comments:

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