Get serious

ARE PHONE COMPANIES HELPING THE GOVERNMENT SPY?

One question arising from the revelation that the government monitored phone calls without court approval is whether phone companies cooperated

is online (email) head for Chi Trib page-one, top left one-column story by telecom writer Jon Van.  It’s punchy and gets right to it.  The hard-copy head is something else, vague and indirect:

Phone giants mum on spying
In past, industry has cooperated with U.S.

It’s as if you play it vague and indirect with breakfasters and Metra riders because Trib is comfy waking-up fare, but you don’t really get serious until you’re online.

Meanwhile, it’s the civil liberties angle again, not defense.  Is it ever defense?  Trib editors — news editors, that is — just don’t get it: a) we’re at war and b) there are other news-deciders to follow besides NY Times, whose sloppiness in reporting the NSA concoction has been amply debunked by Power Line, where you can find a really serious treatment of the subject.

Later:

Reader Bob asked, "Where  would Cynthia get such info?" 

I noted that as for cooperation with the Chinese, Drudge had it months ago, quoting a mainstream source.

Reader Cynthia:

Funny you should mention the Drudge Report. I was just in Japan, visiting some missionary friends, and another missionary I met while I was there loved having someone to talk politics with, and told me he really relied on Drudge to keep him informed of what was really happening in the U.S.

I will say, on behalf of Ms, that at least they just developed software that warns people when they are saying something unacceptable: putting in the wrong words prompts the error message "This item contains forbidden speech. Please delete the forbidden speech from this item." Forbidden speech includes the Chinese for “democracy,” "demonstration", "democratic movement" and "Taiwan independence.”

A friend of mine who is very involved in the Libertarian party (started the Illinois chapter, in fact, and has been their candidate for Senator at least a couple of times) got rid of SBC as her ISP, she was so upset about their participation in Chinese censorship. While I confirmed the Microsoft story myself before saying anything (I do know that rule), my friend has such good contacts that it didn’t seem necessary to check on the SBC story — and having traveled quite a bit in China myself, I can’t imagine anyone being allowed to operate any business there if they didn’t cooperate. China’s government knows we’re drooling over China as a market, and they don’t feel any pressure to alter their humans rights position.