First, the most fascinating detail to emerge is that it appears the NSA was talking to the giant telecoms about handing over customer data a full seven months before 9/11. Documents show that Nacchio met with the NSA on February 27, 2001, at which time Nacchio refused a request that he deemed illegal. If true, this would seem to contradict the Bush administration claim that any laws broken by the telecoms were hasty mistakes made in the confusion following the terrorist attacks.
Nacchio still needed to get nailed for insider trading, but this got swept under the rug during the Bush years.
Also, this paved the way for untrustworthy Louisiana company CenturyTel to buy Qwest and rename themselves as CenturyLink.
Anyway we have been a police state for a long time, it's just only recently the mask slipped.