Hey Verizon! Can You Hear Me Now?

The next time one of those telemarketers call at 9am on a Saturday morning, think twice before hanging up on them, especially if they are asking you to switch your long distance service. If your carrier is Verizon or AT&T, these companies may have just turned your phone records over to a massive NSA database for suspected terrorists.

USA Today reported Thursday that, in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth secretly provided records on tens of millions of customers' phone calls to the National Security Agency. AT&T is now in the process of acquiring BellSouth.

Tens of millions of customers. Are there really that many terrorists in the US, or could some of those phone records belong to law-abiding US citizens? My guess is that even the most paranoid of officers at the NSA, (including that guy with the big bald alien-like head who is soon to be the new CIA director) doesn't think there are millions of terrorist who actually use Verizon. Knowing that Don Rumsfeld has already spied on the Raging Grannies, and those nice Quakers, do you think that these tens of millions of customers might be someone you know? Someone say like a liberal-leaning blogger, or someone is on the e-mail list of Moveon.org? That someone might be Marigolds, or Bruce, or even me, Tankwoman.

Of course, you don't really have to use my phone records to know what I'm saying, you can click right onto Blogger and get it all in writing.

I don't use the phone that much, and my conversations are pretty normal, work, my partner, my mother, Pizza Hut. But there was that one time I dialed a wrong number, and the woman on the line had such a sexy voice, that I forgot to hang up, and even gave her my credit card number so I could continue talking. By the time I realized that I was mistakenly speaking to one of those phone sex babes, it was too late, I had spent a fortune on my credit card, and had an earful of very interesting conversation. But it was all just a misunderstanding, still it's not a conversation I would want some bald-headed alien guy listening in on.

So hey Verizon, I want my phone records back. And the next time someone calls me and offers me a toaster if I switch my long distance, I'm taking the toaster and saying hey Verizon, can you hear me now? F- you!

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