Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I’ve had an instructive interchange with my now former cell phone provider over the past week. It started with the USAToday story that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth were allegedly providing customer call records to the NSA. I called Verizon Wireless, (VW) my cell phone provider, the next day to ask about the matter. [...]

If, as the NY Times says, Verizon is now denying it cooperated with the NSA program to monitor its customers’ phone records, then why have its Customer Relations managers since Friday been acknowledging their participation? It just boggles the mind. The sheer ineptitude of the company’s corporate communications astonishes.
As I reported in an [...]

In tonight’s Colbert Report, Steven Colbert turned me onto a report by Brian Ross, Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You’re Calling, about widespread FBI monitoring of reporters’ phone records in order to ferret out government sources who provide confidential information for stories embarrassing to the Bush Administration. Many reporters from various [...]

Tom Zeller, who covers blogging for the NY Times wrote Qwest Goes From the Goat to the Hero about Qwest’s stellar performance in the recent NSA-phone company imbroglio. Qwest was the only one of four national telecommunications giants to just say no to Big Brother when he came knocking for phone records on all [...]

Barton Gellman wrote in a Thursday, May 11th Washington Post article about telephone company cooperation with the NSA spying program that Verizon Wireless (VW) said it was not involved in the program. This would distinguish it from its parent company, Verizon, which DID participate. I did not read Mr. Gellman’s story until later [...]

So it’s good bye Verizon–hello Qwest. After reading about the latest and ever-expanding NSA spying scandal yesterday, I decided to call Verizon Wireless today and ask them to explain their thinking in cooperating with NSA. I was told to call the Verizon Customer Relations department in California (1-800-483-7988). If you’re a customer [...]

Pulling a Murtha. I think I’ve just coined a political neologism. Actually, it wouldn’t be a neologism since I didn’t coin a word, but you get my drift.
Congressional Democrats have long been known for their courageous willingness to take on Republican presidents bent on mischief. So I waited with baited breath to [...]