When you hear about whistle blowers, you usually think of ENRON or some other large company. The last thing I would ever expect to hear about would be someone working at the NSA, the spookiest of the spooks in my opinion, whistle blowing on that agency to the NY Times and then offering to testify to congress.
The case in question involves a man named Russel Tice who worked for the agency and grew weary of the abuses he saw being committed in the name of justice. Evidently phone monitoring systems are in place to catch key words like "jihad" and then pull that persons entire phone conversation and log it for later analysis.
Tice says that the number of Americans being affected and watched could theoretically reach into the millions, especially if the citizen made an oversea phone call since 9/11. Not unsurprisingly Tice lost his security clearance for supposed psychological concerns and was later dismissed.
Ross, By Brian. "NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying - ABC News." ABCNews.com - ABCNews.com: Breaking News, Vote 2010 Elections, Politics, World News, Good Morning America, Exclusive Interviews - ABC News. 10 Jan. 2006. Web. 14 Nov. 2010. <http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1491889>.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Consumer Rights
Imagine that you get a bill that you know to be wildly inaccurate, with the way companies have set their phone systems up now it is going to take you hours of leg work and waiting to straighten out the companies mistake. What rights do you have?
I was personally harassed for months by collection agencies about a cell phone bill that was way out of proportion to my actual charges. The problem was that the old company, SunCom, had been bought out by AT&T and then replaced with T-Mobile. T-Mobile had taken my closed account and was attempting to charge me over a thousand dollars for the supposed closed account. I had to repeatedly fax letters of dispute to each collection agency that contacted me. It was until the third collection agency dropped the case and didn't sell my bill off that it disappeared from my credit report.
So what are our rights as consumers? Various searches have netted me the same results. The following link is a government site that list your rights under the Fair Credit Billing Act: .http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre16.shtm
Basically you have the right to dispute, send in a letter in a certain format etc. There is no law stating that you be compensated for the time and energy you have to put in except that you can sue the company in question (good luck with legal fees). From personal experience I can tell you the only way to win an unfair dispute is to play the bureaucratic game. Paper work the company in question to death and eventually there will be some sort of resolution, whether you like the outcome or not.
I was personally harassed for months by collection agencies about a cell phone bill that was way out of proportion to my actual charges. The problem was that the old company, SunCom, had been bought out by AT&T and then replaced with T-Mobile. T-Mobile had taken my closed account and was attempting to charge me over a thousand dollars for the supposed closed account. I had to repeatedly fax letters of dispute to each collection agency that contacted me. It was until the third collection agency dropped the case and didn't sell my bill off that it disappeared from my credit report.
So what are our rights as consumers? Various searches have netted me the same results. The following link is a government site that list your rights under the Fair Credit Billing Act: .http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre16.shtm
Basically you have the right to dispute, send in a letter in a certain format etc. There is no law stating that you be compensated for the time and energy you have to put in except that you can sue the company in question (good luck with legal fees). From personal experience I can tell you the only way to win an unfair dispute is to play the bureaucratic game. Paper work the company in question to death and eventually there will be some sort of resolution, whether you like the outcome or not.
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