Verizon in the Doghouse

As the constant debate of whether the NSA’s intelligence collection is moral or not, there is always one company that is the “teacher’s pet” so to speak.  This company happens to live inside most of America’s pockets and homes, and continues to run around handing over your data collections to the government, with no end to this in sight.

As many Americans are already aware, Verizon has handed over personal metadata of many of their customers before, and they continue to work with the NSA.  Despite the fact that the government is forcing the data out of Big Red, they continue to hand it over, without challenging them on a moral or constitutional level.  Many customers feel that Verizon is breaching all levels of privacy and security that they are paying to have.

           

Recently, at the Cyber Security Summit in New York City, Verizon Vice President of national security policy Marcus Sachs was caught saying the worst possible sentence he could have uttered:

“If you’re worried about it, do something about it. Take security on yourselves, and don’t trust anybody else to do it. Don’t look at us to protect your data. That’s on you,” Sachs said. “There are services out there up to a certain point. You want encrypted phone calls? There’s an app for that.”

What this means for Verizon customers is essentially this: Verizon does not want to become a stance for protection against their users, contrary to what Google has done.  They will continue to hand over the information you send over their networks, wireless or otherwise.  This digital age has become an era of protecting yourself against the government because there is no privacy among big companies.

As a Verizon Customer, I am appalled that a vice president would say this, at a security press conference.  What the NSA does does not bother me either way, but to see a company continually go against what the mass of their customers demand says a lot about the company.  It is almost laughable as well.  How far can the encryption go before an NSA worker decrypts your phone call?  It would not be hard data to acquire either, Verizon would hand it over if the government asked.  The protection of our data is solely in our hands as users because no one else can truly protect it.