They Just Said NO
CNet reports that in addition to Qwest, the following companies also told NSA NO: RCN, AOL Time Warner, Comcast, Cox Communications, Cablevision Systems, Cingular Wireless, Microsoft, T-Mobile and EarthLink.
As I keep saying: if this was legal and above board these companies wouldn’t have refused to participate. They have received enough complaints about selling their customer lists to others, that they know people don’t like it.
Businesses don’t like it either. I’ve signed enough non-disclosure agreements over the years to be able to say that businesses of any size don’t want their competitors to know who they call.
The NSA doesn’t have the people to handle this workload, so they are going to hire a contractor and there is no guarantee that the contractor won’t run a few commercial searches while working on the contract. The potential for abuse is huge.
Update: Michael adds Working Assets to the list of the “no” group, and writes about his exchange with Verizon concerning their complicity.
9 comments
Also my long-distance and wireless carrier, Working Assets (whose CEO signed on to an amicus brief in the pending federal lawsuit). I posted the “response” (I use the scare quotes advisedly) I got from Verizon to my pissed-off e-mail on their wimping out earlier tonight. If that’s the tenor of what I continue hearing from them, it’s quite likely I’ll be dropping them altogether when I move.
I’m relieved, as I recently signed a two-year cell phone contract with Cingular.
I can’t find the link at the moment, but I read on some blog yesterday that in the EU, the entertainment industries are pressing the legislature to extend the use of data mining from terrorism investigations to searches for CD/DVD pirates. How far can this go? Too far, I’m certain… and commercial interests will press for abuses we haven’t even dreamed of yet.
Michael, I’ve updated to include Working Assets and point to your post. The guy from Verizon sounds like he thinks he’s in the CIA. “I can neither confirm or deny”, excuse me but I just posted a list of companies who are denying it, so you must be doing it.
Twit.
I read that too, Steve, probably in a CNet article about the changes in the EU law. The RIAA et al. are on a fishing expedition and they want to get information without paying for it. The problem they have is that if they do back tracing they risk violating hacking laws. How long will it take them to understand that their attitude is one of the reasons people don’t want to buy CDs. Who wants to deal with anyone who considers you a criminal for being connected to the Internet.
Bryan, as I’ve noted before, I’ve stopped buying physical recordings (CDs, DVDs etc.) until such time as the recording industry ceases to behave as if its customers were its enemies. Why should I reward that deplorable behavior? (I make an exception for gifts; I don’t enforce my personal boycotts on my friends.)
The recording industry has managed to get its issue in front of the public as if the latter’s lives depended on stopping all piracy, as if the world depended on whether the industry made merely outrageous profits as it does now, or obscene profits as it might be able to do with the threat of jail time for minor pirates. I don’t pirate media, file-share, or condone any of that, but c’mon, it’s not an earth-shattering issue. Punishment for individuals who commit these acts non-entrepreneurially should be the retail price of the material they shared, plus a fine about the same as, or less than, a parking ticket.
Steve, CDs are just too expensive for most people. People are burning their own CDs so they know what it costs to produce one. They are able to figure out that artists on major labels aren’t making the money that was once assumed.
You have to wonder how long it will take for people to figure out that this “war” on listeners costs more than it brings in to the record companies.
I have Cingular Wireless. *breathes sigh of relief at not having to change carriers*
LK, I think the rules are probably different for cellular systems because they are radios and would fall under different FCC rules than landline companies, that are normally under states at the local level.
Bryan, Josh Marshall thinks the telcos are issuing non-denial “denials” that have to be parsed… things like not having “contracts” or “agreements” with the NSA to disclose phone numbers. We may have been had, not by Bushco this time but by the telcos.
You mean the comments by BellSouth and Verizon today? They are BS, the information came from hardware guys at the telcos who made the connection to the NSA switches.
They are the only people who would really know that it happened. The guys in the boardroom wouldn’t even know what happened or what the equipment did. The phone companies aren’t giving copies of tapes or CDs, NSA is wired into their system.
I’ve known of at least one case where, while “helping” with a problem, a local slipped a wireless router into a neighbor’s cable broadband connection. The owner of the computer was rather surprised to learn he was sharing his connection with the world.
All you have to do is trace the equipment to figure out who is involved.
It’s a totally different process for cellular or cable companies and you can’t buy what is necessary off the shelf.