Smooth operators: why phone companies don't fight the NSA | The Verge: ".... we don't need to wonder what a telecom whistleblower might look like. In February 2001, Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio says he was approached by NSA agents about establishing direct access to Qwest's call records without a FISA warrant. Nacchio declined, thinking the program was illegal. Subsequent leaks showed Qwest as the only phone company that declined to participate in the program. The retaliation was immediate: Nacchio says Qwest lost government contracts in the following months (although some contest this), and the business started to collapse. Just a few years later, Nacchio was brought up on insider trading charges, a prosecution he maintains was political payback. There are plenty who doubt Nacchio’s story — as one put it to me recently, "it’s a great way to come out of an insider trading case looking like a hero" — but it’s still an unsettling thought for any telecom who’s considering pushing back against law enforcement. For anyone worried about surveillance, the moral of the story is even worse. There are plenty of encryption schemes, plenty of services that will promise to safeguard your data, and the recent transparency push could make them even safer. The past few months have focused more on soft networks, whether it's Lavabit's SSL keys or the encryption that safeguards Gmail. But access to the lines carrying that data has never been in doubt. And anyone making a push for transparency knows better than to look to AT&T for help...." (read more at link above)
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