Billboard Liberation Front vs. ATT + NSA

The Billboard Liberation Front today announced a major new advertising improvement campaign executed on behalf of clients AT&T and the National Security Agency. Focusing on billboards in the San Francisco area, this improvement action is designed to promote and celebrate the innovative collaboration of these two global communications giants.

More, and larger, uncropped version of the pic above by Jacob Appelbaum is here.

(hat tip to BoingBoing.net

Jay Rockefeller (D-Verizon)

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) is reportedly steering the secretive Senate Intelligence Committee to give retroactive immunity to telecoms that helped the government secretly spy on Americans.He has also recently benefited from some interesting political contributions.

clipped from guntotingliberal.com Democratic Lawmaker Pushing Immunity Is Newly Flush With Telco Cash Top Verizon executives, including CEO Ivan Seidenberg and President Dennis Strigl, wrote personal checks to Rockefeller totaling $23,500 in March, 2007. Prior to that apparently coordinated flurry of 29 donations, only one of those executives had ever donated to Rockefeller (at least while working for Verizon). In fact, prior to 2007, contributions to Rockefeller from company executives at AT&T and Verizon were mostly non-existent. AT&T executives discovered a fondness for Rockefeller just a month after Verizon execs did and over a three-month span, collectively made donations totaling $19,350.

Scumbag.

These Clowns Will Fuck You Up

Why Retroactive Amnesty for Telcos Matters

clipped from chrisdodd.com Yesterday afternoon I sat down with AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein. He’s the technician who revealed that the NSA has secret rooms for sweeping up massive amounts of electronic communications on the internet. Klein is calling on the Senate to not grant telecommunications companies retroactive immunity. He’s also testifying to the scale of the Bush administration’s electronic surveillance: “Everything you could imagine you use the internet for flows through these cables. It’s not only international traffic, but a huge amount of domestic traffic too.” Watch the video of Klein talking about why he opposes retroactive immunity.

I turn to the indefatigable Matt Browner-Hamlin for the real deal on telecom immunity.

Verizon and AT&T Not In On Google’s Open Source Phone

clipped from gizmodo.com Sprint and T-Mobile are big companies but they don’t have the momentum or subscribers that Verizon Wireless and AT&T do. The opening volley of official announcements from Google and the Open Handset Alliance bring good news for people sick of the carrier choke hold. Of course, it’s easy to spot who gets an Android device first: T-Mobile and Sprint.

When Google announced the Open Handset Alliance, Sprint and T-Mobile jumped on board but Verizon and AT&T didn’t.Verizon said it “shares the goal of more open mobile application development,” and that this competitive move on Google’s part shows that innovation comes without the need for “legislation nor regulation.”

The robber baron Verizon is praising the radical free market and deploring regulation because they want to party like it’s 1929.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Verizon doesn’t want to give up the tightly gripped vice they hold on their locked handsets. They thrive on proprietary business models. Open source anything is Kryptonite to them.

AT&T’s Spy Technology Explained

This tech blog Freedom To Tinker explores exactly how AT&T went about becoming comic book evil in a gutless toady kind of way:

clipped from www.freedom-to-tinker.com Here are a couple of representative diagrams from the paper: Fig. 4. Guilt by association – what is the shortest path to a fraudulent node? Fig. 5. A guilt by association plot. Circular nodes correspond to wireless service accounts while rectangular nodes are conventional land line accounts. Shaded nodes have been previously labeled as fraudulent by network security associates. When this research was done, back in the last century, the bad guys where people who wanted to rip off AT&T by making fraudulent credit-card calls. (Remember, back in the last century, intercontinental long-distance voice communication actually cost money!) But it’s easy to see how the FBI could use this to chase down anyone who talked to anyone who talked to a terrorist. Or even to a “terrorist.”

MetroNetIQ Loves Laura

Tech blog MetroNetIQ wrote: “Laura Scher, co-founder, chairperson and CEO of Working Assets, has written a couple of blogs that beg to be shared with you.Working Assets is a mobile and credit card company founded in 1985 “on the belief that building a business and building a better world are not mutually exclusive.” The company has donated over $50 million to progressive nonprofit groups. As CEO, Laura helped Working Assets grow to more than $100 million in annual revenue. Laura now is a lecturer at Stanford University, teaching “Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship” at the undergraduate level.

In early October, Laura wrote about the propriety of an Internet Service Provider that would reach into your emails and censor you, based on their determination of what is appropriate use of “their” network. HMMMMMM….did you read the fine print of your contract?”

Last week we witnessed Verizon trying to prevent a nonprofit from communicating with its own members because the company believed the content to be unsavory. Under the pressure of The New York Times front-page story and a storm of criticism, they caved.

Now it’s happened again: another communications company trying to limit communications of its subscribers. This time, AT&T has added a bizarre provision in its terms of service that its network subscribers – anyone using AT&T for internet service – cannot participate in “conduct that AT&T believes…tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

So the message from AT&T is: if you’re using AT&T for your e-mail, be careful what you say. Goodbye free speech. Hello, corporate censorship.

But let’s be clear: the only one doing real damage to AT&T . . . is AT&T’s own corporate policy .

Sadly, we have few alternative services. Over the past 10 years we have seen consolidation instead of competition. Where there were once 10 phone companies now there are but a measly four. Most of us have only two choices for Internet access and both are enormous companies. Our government has remained silent, if not complicit, as this consolidation has occurred. The FCC and Department of Justice have approved merger after merger, each of which reduced – not encouraged – competition.

clipped from www.metronetiq.com Remember, today’s “new” AT&T (which, not incidentally, has given over $1.8 million to Republican candidates) is really SBC, which, before it took over that telecom giant, gobbled up Ameritech, Pacific Bell, Bell South, and Cingular, among others. It’s noteworthy that these companies originated as regulated utilities, charged with the rights and responsibilities of providing a public good. Yet today the regulators, instead of protecting the citizens of this country, protect and abet the companies that are eliminating consumer choice through voracious mergers. — I leave you with one unsettling question. How does AT&T find out if we’re writing e-mails that are “damaging their name? ” Are they now tracking our in-boxes? If you read this and use AT&T for your Internet service, why not give this a try: e-mail this article to a friend. It’s the most subversive thing AT&T thinks you can do. October 5, 2007. AT&T: Out of My In-Box!

Also on HuffPo is another post that begs extensive blogquoting:

It’s been all over the news that in 2007, executives at Verizon and AT&T donated over $42,000 to Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn’t getting any significant contributions from telecomm executives. But of course, prior to 2007, Rockefeller wasn’t pushing his committee to grant retroactive immunity to phone companies that helped the NSA with its secret, warrantless surveillance on America’s telephone calls.

There are so many reasons to be enraged by this.

As CEO of Working Assets, the socially responsible mobile and long distance company, I have watched for 15 years while big telecom “bought” monopoly power from Congress, from the White House and from the FCC. This is how they do business. Instead of building the best phone company, they buy politicians.

Instead of the vibrantly competitive telecom landscape promised by the deregulation of AT&T in 1984 and the Telecom Act of 1996, today we have a handful of telecommunications companies controlling legislation and policy, consolidating instead of innovating, and shutting out competitors. All with the blessing of the FCC.

Once upon a time the FCC took its role seriously, and required the phone companies to lease their networks. For a brief moment we had a competitive local telecom market offering a range of customized bundles and new features. Working Assets offered local service and doubled our donations for the customers who participated. But in due course the FCC bowed to the phone companies, and competitive local service simply vanished.

To add insult to injury, our politicians are cheap dates. For $42,000, these mega telecoms made a small but effective investment, given the magnitude of the lawsuits they are hoping to avoid, upwards of billions of dollars of damage. That’s cheaper than hiring a D.C. lawyer for a week. When an issue is below the radar screen, it’s easy to buy influence. But now that the issues have gone from thwarting competition to spying on Americans, I hope the public will start to pay attention, and hang up on the telecom companies’ on-going campaign to buy the law that suits them best.

McCarthyism 2.0

Technology blog Mashable looks through an FBI document dump and explains how AT&T got so good at discarding their customers’ personal rights. The layman’s explanation seems to be that by use of several seemingly simple data-mining algorithms, they scan through call logs and track the connections between phone numbers.

clipped from mashable.com Essentially, if you talk to someone who talks to terrorists, your phone records could be in scrutiny. The research for this technology was done pre-2000, in an effort by AT&T to curtail those who made fraudulent credit-card calls, but has since been re-applied by the FBI to discern new people of interest.� Gone are the days of the McCarthy era, when folks were solicited to name names – your phone company now (at no extra cost to you!) provides this service for you.

What Is It Called When Corporations Meld With Government?

Oh, that’s right, it’s an F word that I can’t say or else I’m crazy.

clipped from www.workingassetsblog.com Do they teach this in Government 101 yet? Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping. The surge in contributions came from a Who’s Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports. Bush’s domestic spying program was illegal and these companies participated, willingly. They didn’t have to. They could have fought it — not just because it would have been right or Constitutional to fight it, but because they broke the law by not fighting it. So now they fight in their own way: with cash. And we have to fight in our own way: take action and tell your friend…it’s time to hold people accountable for breaking the law.

The Bush Administration’s TelCos

clipped from ap.google.com WASHINGTON (AP) — Three telecommunications companies have declined to tell Congress whether they gave U.S. intelligence agencies access to Americans’ phone and computer records without court orders, citing White House objections and national security. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell “formally invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from either confirming or denying” any details about intelligence programs, AT&T general counsel Wayne Watts wrote in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Qwest and Verizon also declined to answer, saying the federal government has prohibited them from providing information, discussing or referring to any classified intelligence activities. “Our company essentially finds itself caught in the middle of an oversight dispute between the Congress and the executive relating to government surveillance activities,” Watts wrote.

“Three telecos have declined to tell Congress. Citing White House objections.

Here, the Republican White House says it can use the state secrets privilege (normally something invoked in the courts, not in Congress) to prevent corporations from testifying before Congress.

Democratic Congress demands the right to inform itself about the subject matter on which it legislates, and the executive branch says “no – just do what we want.”

Will the Democratic Congress be as spineless as these 3 telcos?

Note, too, that the three telcos say “the federal government” has prohibited them from providing this information to Congress.

Has Congress removed itself from “the federal government” since we last checked?

Idiots.