I would like to give some props to the telco QWest. Though they are the smallest of the 3 giants that own all of the lines you are reading this post through. That’s right the internets and your phone calls. QWest has declined to hand over or sell call record data of it’s customers to the government. ATT and Verizon complied right away. Why? Big business and government go hand in hand. So I’m sure because QWest has made their decision we probably won’t see them for very much longer. And BellSouth seems to be playing dumb right now saying “Noone from NSA every contacted us.” Funny but isn’t ATT trying to buy BellSouth? All of this just seems really bad. Like Empire Stikes Back bad.

Burnie Burns gave us a peek at the scary future of the internets and the telcos during his keynote this year at SXSW. Here’s the podcast.