ACLU Demands FCC Investigate at&t

The following press release was distributed today by the ACLU:

NEW YORK -- The American Civil Liberties Union said today that it has filed formal comments reminding the Federal Communications Commission of allegations that AT&T and BellSouth illegally provided customer information to the National Security Agency, and pointing out that under existing law the FCC cannot permit the pending merger between those two companies to proceed without investigating the merit of those allegations.

"As you know, a May 11th article in USA Today alleged that at least three telecommunications companies, AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, cooperated with the NSA in an effort to collect calling information and call patterns on every American," the ACLU said in a formal filing signed by ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero and other officials. "These actions seem to be in direct violation of statutory guarantees on the privacy of telephone calling information."

The ACLU also reminded FCC officials that the agency "has a statutory duty as part of its review of the AT&T-BellSouth merger application to perform a full investigation of the claims reported in USA Today."

All of which reminds me -- with the merger of at&t and Bell South, the eight baby bells will have shrunk to three, Verizon, at&t, and Qwest. It seems only yesterday, we had a major law suit that broke up the original AT&T. Somehow, I doubt that a reunion of the babies will be any more benign than the original model. Indeed, in today's dog eat dog world, my guess is it will be significantly less benign, particularly if the Congress fails to endorse net neutrality.