The limits of patriotism

In a ridiculously bizarre turn of events today, telecommunication companies cut off the FBI’s wiretaps used to listen in on suspected terrorists. If you remember the 5 year old debate, the Patriot Act was passed in late 2001 and enabled the FBI and other counter-terrorism agencies to listen in on private citizen’s phone and internet conversations in the name of ‘protection of the country.’ While the public was in an outrage and demanded their privacy be respected, the phone companies complied because of their “patriotism”.

Now we know how far their patriotism lies – right up to the point which their bills get paid. AMERICABlog summarizes their stance pretty well:

“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.”

So should we be more angry at the phone companies, who are hypocritical to the extreme in that they’re were willing to ignore our privacy but will take all that back when their bills aren’t paid; or the Government, who decided that terrorism is big enough a threat that we needed to invite the people’s privacy, but not important enough to even pay their bills on time?