ACLU Energy Sink Hole
May 12th, 2006
Dear Friend,
Yesterday the nation learned that American telephone companies are helping the government amass what one source called “the largest database ever assembled,” compiling call information on millions of consumers and businesses served by Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth. Take action now!
Scrambling to defend his program, President Bush told reporters “we’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” but that’s simply not true.
This illegal spying is not only directed toward terror suspects or international calls, as the Bush administration has frequently claimed. With the help of these phone companies, the government is tracking the calls and communications of millions of ordinary Americans. And that’s just plain wrong.
The government shouldn’t track when you call your mother, order pizza, or hold a conference call — and your phone service provider shouldn’t help them without a warrant or Congress’ approval.
Send these companies a message today. Sign our petition at http://action.aclu.org/dontspy and tell them you expect your phone records to be held in the strictest privacy.
We’ll be delivering these petitions directly to AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.
You’ll be hearing more about this consumer campaign in the days and weeks to come. The ACLU and its members will do whatever it takes to rally consumer voices against these abuses of power. There will be much more for us all to do.
This is obviously the wrong thing to do.
The RIGHT thing to do is have a ‘National Day of No Calls’ Where everyone vows not to use the phone except in an emergency for an entire day.
This should continue untill the telephone services install iron clad guarantees that they will not allow access to your call logs. Should they fail to do this, then everyone should move to Qwest, who refused to obey the NSA. Qwest should be financially rewarded for sticking up for their customers.
This is the sort of thing the ACLU should be organizing, not more pathetic and useless petitions, that do nothing but suck up the anger energy of all those whose privacy is being violated.