Qwest Stands Alone

Qwest, the telephone company, apparently rejected a request from the Administration to hand over phone records because it concluded that the request was illegal. The New York Times reports the story here: Company Explains Rejection of N.S.A. Requests

Is it just me or does this just add to the confusion? Why can one out of four of the largest phone companies think something is illegal, while the other three are content to go along? And is it just a coincidence that at least one of the three compliant companies has a chief attorney with strong Republican party affiliations? Who knows, but it muddies things just when we need clarity.

The Administration keeps on claiming that it isn’t using the records of the rest of us, just those of “known bad guys”. So why ask for a whole bunch of records it doesn’t want? Contrary to what they say, I have to assume that it does want them, and that it is using them. Which means that we have a Stasi like operation somewhere going through all our communications [like your viewing of this page] trying to figure out whether you and I are “bad guys” too.

As I wrote yesterday: Bush and his cronies have lied so relentlessly and so blatantly about the supposed war on terror, and they have been so extraordinarily bold in their complete disregard for the Constitution that their current profession of innocence rings hollow. We simply cannot believe them. Further: Congress has been unutterably lame in performing its “checks and balances” role, so we also know that comments by Hagel, Specter et al are just pathetic cover for the Administration. We in the citizenry have been deserted by our leadership. They need to earn our trust back, and this wiretapping isn’t helping.

This month’s Atlantic Monthly has an excellent article about the way in which a Moslem, Ali al-Timimi was sentenced to life in prison on the basis of highly dubious evidence, much of which was gleaned from illegally tapped phone calls. He seems to me to have been an extremely conservative Moslem with strong conviction and a whole bunch of rotten associates, but the Government’s case was created entierly circumstantially. Just the kind of stuff that a few imaginative secret police [i.e. NSA] operatives could put together from a bunch of innocent phone calls that you or I could have made.

And yes: the lack of proper Congressional oversight has turned the NSA into a form of secret police. And secret police are never a good thing least of all in a democracy.