Why do our telecommunications companies seem so intent on competing to be more evil?

Verizon and its government allies told a federal court judge Thursday that national security requires the dismissal of lawsuit accusing the phone provider of violating federal privacy laws by allegedly providing millions of phone records to a secret anti-terrorism data-mining program. Verizon also argues that the nation's telephone privacy laws interferes with the company's free speech rights....

Verizon lawyer Henry Weissmann argued that the privacy rules that largely bar phone companies from turning over records to the government were unconstitutional. "Communicating information to the government would be speech. Providing information to law enforcement would be petitioning," Weissmann said. "The plaintiff say there was too much speech, that too many records were provided."