Don't require a password for importing Twitter contacts

I love that there's an easy-peasy way to import contacts and discover Get Satisfaction users, but I'm puzzled about why you need my Twitter password to import Twitter contacts.

I know you know that followers are publicly available at http://twitter.com/{user}/followers and users you're following at http://twitter.com/{user}/following, so why do I need to hand over my password? I guess it would be necessary if I protected my tweets, but follower/following lists are publicly available with non-protected accounts.

Both FriendFeed and BrightKite, for example, only ask for username in their contact discovery tools.

Thanks for listening!