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FCC Refuses to Investigate Telephone Carriers for Illegal Call Monitoring

7:30 am on May 25, 2006 | Category: Law, Regulation, Telecom Services, Telephone

The Federal Communications Commission has decided not to investigate claims that three major American telephone providers broke the law by helping the National Security Agency compile a massive database of customer call records.

FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin, said in a letter to Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, that the Commission could not investigate this issue because of its â€œclassified nature.â€

Markey is now calling for a congressional inquiry into the telephone companiesâ€™ involvement, saying that this investigation is too important to simply abandon.

“If the oversight body that monitors our nation’s communications is stepping aside, then Congress must step in,” Markey said on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, however, there seem to be many people within the U.S. government who are hell-bent on keeping the truth about call monitoring well out of the public eye. Intelligence officials are continually using the excuse that “highly sensitive classified information” is involved to keep the public in the dark about issues concerning their own privacy and other rights.

The government has even gone so far as to ask that court cases be dismissed for the sole reason that they may be a threat to classified information, even when nobody privy to such information is being asked to testify.

It is a good sign that some lawmakers like Mr. Markey are trying to hold companies (and the government itself) accountable for violating the trust of consumers and citizens at large. It is up to citizens themselves, however, to ensure that these efforts are not abandoned, that that all possible steps are taken to expose the truth about how privacy rights are being threatened.

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