Did you get that? The same phone companies who simply HAD to give the feds all of our most private phone information, including calls you made and received, without the necessary court order, are now willing to stop that same surveillance because the feds didn't pay their bills on time. And it resulted in lost evidence:
''We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,'' according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.
Really, were we listening in to Osama when the greedy phone companies shut off the wiretap? I think someone should be asking just which company did this, and just what evidence we lost? Was this a terror case? Could innocent Americans have been killed?
So to the big phone companies, the rule of law doesn't matter. Promises to protect your privacy don't matter. But if you don't show them the money, suddenly all their "we had to illegally spy on you to defend national security" talk goes out the window. National security isn't so important to the big phone companies when money is involved. I'm so heartened that the Democrats are going to give these same greedy, un-American companies immunity in only a few weeks.
