Phone Giants "mum" on Spying

[shance]

Do others remember after 9/11, (when "everything changed") all the phone trucks (and cable)in the neighborhoods in masse, all times of the day and night?

It happened for a good while, seems like a few years, at least here in California. They even fixed and/or altered my lines because of chronic static, which seemed to appear out of no where. They had to go to a location two or three blocks away to fix my line which I thought that was curious. Could have been a coincidence, but what was all the phone company deluge about?

Phone giants mum on spying

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/n...

In the days following revelations that the Bush administration ordered the National Security Agency to spy on domestic telephone and Internet communications without a court order, one involved party has remained silent.

The nation's telephone giants--which control the data pipelines--have neither commented on nor denied their reported participation, nor have they reacted to the charge that they may have been complicit in violating privacy rights.

But historically the telecom companies have cooperated with the government on wholesale wiretapping, and the Bush administration's anti-terrorism programs appear to be no exception.

...

"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."