FCC Declines To Probe Disclosure of Phone Records

An anonymous reader writes "News.com reports that the FCC won't be investigating the phone record disclosures by communications companies under US government pressure. Despite a congressional request for that probe, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin quashed the inquiry based on comments from National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell. 'At issue are reports last year that some big telephone companies allowed the U.S. government access to millions of telephone records for an antiterrorism program. The reports have prompted scrutiny by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, the chairman of a key Energy and Commerce subcommittee, asked Martin to investigate. Markey, of Massachusetts, said McConnell's stance was "unsurprising given that this administration has continually thwarted efforts by Congress to shed more light on the surveillance program."'"

Comments

Possession is still 9 points of the law

[shanen]

I'll believe they [the big companies and the government together in this case] are sincere about my privacy when they agree to store my personal information on *MY* disk space. Whenever they want to look at my personal information they need to tell me why, and I should have the right to say yea or nay to that request. Right now they claim that my personal information belongs to them, and there's no way for me to know anything about what they are doing with it.

In this case, my phone records should be stored on my own equipment, and if they need to doublecheck it, they can show probable cause and get a search warrant. The records can be signed to prevent me from tampering with them, but they have no good reason to own those records.

The *REAL* problem is that the Dubya's government and the big companies want to own our souls.