Corporatations under increased pressure to release customer information

From WSJ.com:

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, law enforcement efforts to secure corporate information about clients and suppliers have reached such levels that some companies have had to create special units that do nothing but deal with these demands, a process often called "subpoena management."

Banks, Internet-service providers and other companies that possess large amounts of data on their customers say that police and intelligence agencies have been increasingly coming to them looking for tidbits of information that could help them stop everything from money launderers to pedophiles and terrorists.

"Corporate counsel that used to see law-enforcement-related requests five times a year are now getting them sometimes dozens of times a day," says Susan Hackett, a senior vice president and top attorney for the Association of Corporate Counsel, which represents the legal departments of leading U.S. companies.

In short, phone companies currently caught up in a controversy over reports that they gave the National Security Agency access to records of customers' calls are hardly the only businesses fretting over how to cooperate with the government in the war on terror. Internet and financial companies also are frequently targeted by intelligence and law enforcement agencies, forcing them into situations where they must choose between customers' rights to privacy and their own corporate desire to help the government without being seen as agents of the government.

The situation is made even more complicated when the companies are government contractors, vying for federal business or in an industry subject to complicated regulation.

Is it any wonder why americans rights to privacy are being so blatantly violated when we have a President who has probably never read the Constitution much less have an understanding of it. What it all comes down to is that this president believes that american citizens have no right to privacy. As i've said before, a president takes an oath to defend the Constitution. Just wait til a Democrat wins the presidency, Republicans who are now willing to accept all of this president's powers will do a complete 180 and start preaching about Constitutional rights.