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

[plural]

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."

Comments

[geminiwench.livejournal.com]

Isnt America lovely?

Cingular and Sprint, during the first data mining, refused to release documents of calls.
Unlike Google, they only put up half a fight and quickly gave in.
Then the NY Times released that all major cell phone companies had been working with the government to trace, track, and store call information FOR government secret agencies and counter-terrorism efforts...

Suddenly, for SOME reason, people were mad, upset, scared....

And started suing. Because, God Bless America and protection of privacy.

Phone companies started freaking out, they didnt know that WE would know what they were doing with our records.

And they IMMEDIATELY started backing and funding government efforts to overturn privacy laws so they wouldn't have to choose between government pressure to release info and citizen pressure to have their privacy maintained and distributed ONLY in a legal fashion.

Businesses have no backbone anymore...

Fuckers.