Although doubtlessly guilty of insider trading, former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio has one moral feather tucked beneath the diamond-encrusted ribbon of his Mr. Moneybags-style top hat: when the NSA approached Nacchio and demanded Qwest phone records to stave off the terrorist threat, Nacchio told them to go fuck themselves. This is while executives at companies like Verizon, AT&T and Bell South gleefully capitulated to what amounts to an illegal and unconstitutional request.

What this means that, thanks to Nacchio, Qwest customers are practically the only people in the country who aren’t currently in the NSA’s massive database of phone records.

Why’d Nacchio do it? It probably wasn’t any real concern over his customers’ privacy. Actually, it looked like he did it because the legal department warned him it would open Qwest up to a massive class-action lawsuit. Of course, that legal quibble might have been unfounded, if the DoJ gets their way in dismissing lawsuits against these companies simply by stamping the court papers with a big, blocky TOP SECRET stamp.

Nod to Nacchio for “no” to NSA [Denver Post] (Thanks, Brandon!)

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