clipped from www.currentmagonline.com I can’t be the only one who’s thought about what a great asset a cell phone would be if you were being kidnapped or mugged.� As you’re being dragged off into that dark alley, get a finger free to dial 911 and just leave the line open so the emergency operators can hear you scream. Apparently Verizon phones put out a low alarm when 911 is dialed.� This is supposedly in response to a section of the Telecommunications Act that requires the phones to be usable by disabled customers, but this can be done without an alarm signal.� A complaint was lodged by a woman who tried to covertly dial 911 when she thought vandals were wandering around her property- and was alarmed by the alarm.� Whoops.� The best part of this is Verizon’s response: “ Sellaway said Verizon is concerned that Carol is unhappy with her service. She saidCarol’s is the first complaint about the tone.”� Yeah Verizon, that’s because the criminals heard everyone else dialing 911, and killed them.

Ok, so it’s not a perfect plan, but as a last resort it’s not bad and if it doesn’t do any good, at least it won’t do any harm, right? I admit I’ve considered it at moments.

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.

Last month, a New York Times blogger wrote a post called “One Reason We Need a Google Phone: Free GPS.” He was complaining that cellphone carriers, mainly Verizon, are disabling the GPS navigation systems built into phones so they can charge $10 a month for the service.

Telephia, a research firm, reported today that half of the $118 million that consumers in the United States spent on cellphone applications in the second quarter of this year was on what it calls “location based services.” That’s mainly services like Verizon’s VZ Navigator that display maps and driving directions using GPS hardware built into phones. Verizon charges $9.99 a month or $2.99 a day for the service.

Verizon is opening up it’s platform now because in Google’s open model for its Android operating system, carriers and phone makers are free to put as many gotchas as they want into phones. Including, for Verizon, this GPS to map gotcha that steals $240 million a year from us in $9.99 per month or $2.99 a DAY fees.

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.

IPDI’s Deputy Director said:

I hope all will attend the event, and I hope some of those dissenting voices will approach us with ideas for future events. Send your questions and ideas to ipdi@ipdi.org.

I have 10 questions for Verizon.
You?

clipped from techdailydose.nationaljournal.com Internet Institute Causes Broadband Policy Stir A storm is brewing over at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet’s decision to invite telecommunications giant Verizon to engage in a discussion next Friday on broadband deployment. The think tank got an avalanche of e-mails from folks on its subscription list — and not all were RSVPs. There were “a number of angry, outraged writers, some of whom question the integrity of IPDI for hosting a big, bad company like Verizon for a discussion about broadband,” the group said.

A report released today by reveals how telecom industry giant Verizon Communications is using a heavy arsenal of intimidation and harassment to fight against workers who are trying to form a union to improve their wages, benefits and working conditions.

Read the whole article at the AFL-CIO blog.

clipped from blog.aflcio.org A report released today by American Rights at Work reveals how telecom industry giant Verizon Communications is using a heavy arsenal of intimidation and harassment to fight against workers who are trying to form a union to improve their wages, benefits and working conditions. The report, Broken Promises: Verizon Neglects its Commitment to Provide Good Jobs and Quality Service, by the nonprofit labor policy and advocacy group, provides first-hand accounts of management’s abusive and intimidating behavior toward Verizon Business technicians who are trying to organize through the Communication Workers of America (CWA) and the Electrical Workers (IBEW).�� Verizon faces National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearings shortly for its anti-union tactics in this and another Verizon Business location in Pennsylvania.�

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.

http://goleft.tv/view.asp?v=619

clipped from www.rawstory.com One of the highest-level executives at Verizon Communications—second largest of the three major telecommunications firms originally alleged to be providing the National Security Agency with customer phone records under contract and without a warrant—has strong, decades-long ties to Central Intelligence, Congress and the Department of Justice Verizon Executive Vice President and General Counsel William P. Barr began his career as an analyst for the CIA in the mid 1970s, and advanced to become an assistant legislative counsel for the agency. He has also held a number of other public positions since then, including those of domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan and even U.S. Attorney General under George Herbert Walker Bush. That testimony reveals a record of sympathy with the sorts of legally contentious activities the NSA is alleged to be conducting with its wiretapping and data mining programs.

Testifying at the Hearing of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, Barr advocated the use of intelligence information in domestic law enforcement proceedings in cases of suspected terrorism.Once a snoop always a snoop.