A ball starts rolling... As we've questioned here, why did the telcos sell out their customers to warrantless snooping? The Chicago Tribune has a timely article. Here, a spokesperson dodges several questions:
"Our members have worked for years with law enforcement with an objective to preserve lawfully authorized surveillance," said Tom Amontree, a spokesman for the US Telecom Association, the industry group representing most phone companies. "We have no comment on national security matters."
How about a comment on customer security matters? And what about "lawfully authorized"? Eric Rabe, speaking for phone giant Verizon says:
"We typically make law enforcement agencies get a court order. Our default is to cooperate, but we don't feel we should appropriate customer information lightly. We try to make sure what we do is in compliance with the law."
So what is atypical? And what does "try" mean? That they make an effort but sometimes, oh gosh, it's just too darn hard? Rabe goes on to say:
"In the Cold War era when there was great concern about Communists, probably a lot of things went on, but today we're more circumspect."
More circumspect? Or more secretive about allowing "backdoor access into the main telecommunications arteries" as the NY Times put it. The article also mentions SKYPE, the voice-over-internet free service that is typically used by over two million people at any one time and is simply not "tappable", since it uses peer-to-peer routing and is encrypted. We can expect the usual lunatics to be calling for the execution of Trib journos since there is no way the turrists would ever have found that one out. I mean really, why use encrypted free, lap-top to lap-top voice comms on a poached Wi-Fi connection when you could use a calling card to call Osama on his hard line?
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