From the New York Times Today.

"Thank you Qwest! It's nice to see someone following principle over profits," wrote a user named Terra at ThankyouQwest.org, a Web site hastily erected by the purveyors of the left-wing blog Empire Burlesque. "When will you have cell service in Ohio?"

I'm sorry I doubted you, Jack. I was going to point this out when you were complaining about Qwest in your Saturday post, but I thought, "He can't be in that inexplicable group who thinks what the NSA did was okay, and that Qwest was wrong, can he?" How easily some of these people relinquish their rights. It's truly dysfunctional. The same leaders lie to them over and over again and Bush supporters rush to say, "It's okay, we trust you."

Trusting government with your privacy is un-American.

I dunno-If the NSA's experience with Quest was anything like mine, it went something like this: The NSA called Qwest up to get the calls, sat on hold a few hours, got transferred all around Southern Asia, finally made an appointment for the call logs to be dropped off, waited around all day for the Qwest rep, called repetedly to find out where they were, and then found out that the scheduled appointment never made it to their calendar. Months later when the rep finally shows up (without an appointment, but luckily catching the NSA at their headquarters) he has the wrong call logs, which developed into a fight, which resulted in Qwest denying the request for logs.

Are you sure you aren't confusing them with AT&T? 'Cause that really sounds like AT&T.

But then, maybe it's an industry standard.

I sent an email to Qwest on Friday. I thanked them and told them this was the first time I had ever been pleased to be one of their customers.

I don't understand why the Bush administration doesn't just get the phone records from those involved in terrorism and leave everyone else alone. Maybe they could create a no terrorist- don't collects records list we could sign up for.
Besides, with our government spending time looking at our phone records they have less time to look for Bin Laden.

I agree with what was said above, the only reason Qwest didn't comply is that they're too incompetent to figure out how to print out calls logs.

Didn't Qwest used to be USWest? Yeah i have nothin nice to say about them. I'll send them a cookie or something i guess.

"Isn't anybody going to say anything nice about Qwest..."

I did.

While it's tempting to applaud Qwest for valuing customer privacy, it's more likely the case that they simply value limiting their liability. Their legal department found greater exposure in assisting the NSA than in non-compliance. It's not a matter of ethics or conscience.

I don't understand why the Bush administration doesn't just get the phone records from those involved in terrorism and leave everyone else alone.

Thats the problem...they dont know who "they" all are. From what I can tell, they want the records to see who is calling who, so they might be able to find someone talking with terrorists or their affiliates.

I guess I dont see the harm in the Feds knowing I dialed "xxx-xxx-xxxx" on a given day. Maybe its because my life is boring, and the most exiting calls I make are to Round Table Pizza.

Could we get a different font or something for ironic comments, so we'll know?

Jon I guess I dont see the harm in the Feds knowing I dialed "xxx-xxx-xxxx" on a given day. Maybe its because my life is boring, and the most exiting calls I make are to Round Table Pizza.
JK: The potential harm is great:
It gives your political opponent a list of your friends so they can find which one would be subject to blackmail to double cross you.

It gives a list of who you are consulting on your election campaign to find which one they might bribe to screw you.

It gives Nixon a list of the reporter’s contacts as a starting point to find who is leaking info about his crimes.

How do you think Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam et al keep their people in line: by knowing every detail of people’s life so that they can kill them at the first hint of disloyalty.

I am disappointed that so many so called conservatives completely miss such simple things when it is their guy doing the spying. They would not have given Clinton a pass.

Thanks
JK

One of my sewing suppliers is headquartered in UAE and is run by a guy named "Al." I call Al all the time and man is he rich! He has like 10 homes around the world and has run me a huge line of credit.

Anyway, if Al gives some of his millions to AQ, and he's not going to tell me about that, then I am on the NSA list and I'm sure they'll visit me sometime soon, if they can find me in the phone book, where I am listed, just like the 9/11 hijackers were!

As long as your calls stay on the Qwest network you're probably OK. But call a cell phone and you're open game because now you get traced back from the other direction. Make a long distance call over someone else's network...you're tracked. Call from Portland (Qwest) to Beaverton (Verizon), you're tracked. Just having Qwest service doesn't mean you're immune from the snooping.

As a former Qwest employee and one actively rooting for Joe Nacchio's conviction, I find it difficult to believe Joe and the boys were acting in an altruistic fashion.

I think Thom Hartman (sp) made the point on KPOJ the other day. When Qwest was asked to supply all the dets, their big boss was under investigation for insider trading and the Qwest lawyers took the route of not risking any more possible law breaking activity.
Oh and BTW Lars says Jack is ignoring the "fact" that the phone companies were reqired by law to give up the records. But this means that qwest broke the law according to lars so where is the action against them ?