Qwest Communications, the telephone company serving my home and most of the Rocky Mountain West, is the orphan stepchild of the US telecoms industry. It's the last independent Baby Bell – mainly because no bigger player wants it – and it nearly went bankrupt a couple of years ago. It's former CEO, Joe Nacchio, was recently convicted of insider trading and faces six years in jail. It has no wireless offering, and potential acquisition targets – notably MCI – tend to flee in search of a more attractive suitor.

Yet when the history of the era is written, Qwest will look like something of a hero for making the right call one on the most significant policy issues that telephone and Internet companies have ever faced: whether to turn over private customer records to the government in the absence of a court order.

Although much of what communications companies did and didn't do at the government's behest in the wake of 9/11 remains classified, it is evident that AT&T and Verizon turned over customer records as part of a domestic surveillance program that lacked proper legal authority. Qwest didn't.

Depending on whether Congress can resist the blandishments of the White House and the phone company lobbyists, Qwest's decision may turn out to have been a very good business move. Verizon and AT&T both face numerous lawsuits from customers for illegally giving out their private information, although as the Wall Street Journal reported last week the White House is now pushing to give them Congressional immunity from any legal liability.

It's incredible that we live in a time in which the White House believes it is above any legal authority other than what it decrees as it goes along - but that is the reality. The wiretapping program in question could easily have been authorised through proper channels. The US has a secret court that approves such things, and in fact the court almost never says no – but the Bush administration has no time for such niceties.

In that context, it's very important that critical institutions which have the power to stand up to the government, like big phone companies, exercise a little backbone. Telecoms and internet firms in particular have enormous amounts of information about just about everyone. Qwest and Verizon (my mobile phone provider) know every call I make. Google keeps records of everything I look for on the Internet and lots of entities probably know the destination and contents of my emails. They have a legal and ethical responsibility to handle that data responsibly, and not just hand it over to whoever might ask – even if they are from the government.

Indeed, Qwest's actions in this situation are extremely significant because they show that companies do, in fact, have a choice. They can cooperate, or they can tell the government agents to come back with a warrant. Insisting the government has proper legal authority for its requests does not make a company an obstructionist or a friend of the terrorists. On the contrary, it makes them ethical, legal actors who are exercising their duties in the face of irresponsible government actions.

There may have been other phone companies that refused to play with the government, and if so good for them. While this specific situation didn't involve search engines, Google has historically been cautious about capricious requests for data, and good for them too.

On the anniversary of 9/11, we're again reminded that there are plenty of bad guys out there. Opinion polls consistently show most people are happy to sacrifice some privacy if it will help to stop the bad guys. But the issue here is not whether domestic eavesdropping is a good thing, it's whether the government needs to obey the law.

If we can't count on our own elected officials to act ethically and legally, it's good to know that at least some in the private sector will do so. Thanks Qwest.

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