Eideard

The nation’s major mobile-phone providers are keeping a treasure trove of sensitive data on their customers, according to newly-released Justice Department internal memo that for the first time reveals the data retention policies of America’s largest telecoms.

The single-page Department of Justice document…is a guide for law enforcement agencies looking to get information — like customer IP addresses, call logs, text messages and web surfing habits – out of U.S. telecom companies, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

The document, marked “Law Enforcement Use Only” and dated August 2010, illustrates there are some significant differences in how long carriers retain your data.

Verizon, for example, keeps a list of everyone you’ve exchanged text messages with for the past year, according to the document. But T-Mobile stores the same data up to five years. It’s 18 months for Sprint, and seven years for AT&T…

The document was unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina via a Freedom of Information Act claim. (After the group gave a copy to Wired.com, we also discovered it in two other places on the internet by searching its title.)

“People who are upset that Facebook is storing all their information should be really concerned that their cell phone is tracking them everywhere they’ve been,” said Catherine Crump, an ACLU staff attorney. “The government has this information because it wants to engage in surveillance…”

“I don’t think there there is anything on this list the government would concede requires a warrant,” said Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “This brings cellular retention practices out of the shadows, so we can have a rational discussion about how the law needs to be changed when it comes to the privacy of our records.”

Vermont’s Patrick Leahy has introduced legislation to alter the Electronic Privacy Communications Act to protect Americans from intrusions on our privacy. How much chance do you think it has of being passed into law?

Do you think Obama would sign it – if it passed Congress? That’s a tough question for many of us who don’t care to vote for the proto-fascist populists who seem to be the Republican alternative.

As AT&T tries to swallow up the American wing of the German telekom, many have wondered whether Apple would allow T-Mobile to carry the iPhone. Apple’s answer so far is a no*, but that hasn’t stopped T-Mobile customers from adopting iPhones. In huge numbers.

In a meeting with T-Mobile spokespeople today ahead of the NYC Pepcom event, I received word that there are actively over a million Apple iPhones currently on T-Mobile’s network.

When asked for a breakdown, the spokesman said the majority were pre-iPhone 4 but that a significant amount of people had “taken the scissors” to their T-Mobile SIM cards. T-Mobile doesn’t currently offer a Micro-SIM solution for Apple’s iPhone 4 so people who want to use the iPhone 4 must modify their SIMs into MicroSIMs. Those using iPhone 4s also won’t receive T-Mobile’s 3G or 4G data speeds because of the radio differences between the networks.

When asked to elaborate further on Micro-SIMs, the spokesman told me they are in the works but there was no time frame for release. Why not wait until the deal with AT&T is done to make MicroSIMs? Perhaps we’ll have a little surprise come September?

Cripes. I may finally have an excuse to get my wife an iPhone.

Does it matter who’s in the White House?

WASHINGTON — in this covetous town, the delicacies of the Georgetown Cupcake shop stand alone as symbols of wish fulfillment — heaping swirls of luscious confection atop rich, creamy pastry.

Therefore: Operation Cupcake. As the Federal Communications Commission debated final rules last December on how Internet service providers should manage their traffic, AT&T delivered 1,500 of these opulent desserts to the F.C.C.’s headquarters here.

Like many other big corporations, AT&T annually blankets power brokers with token holiday gifts, but the cupcake campaign was notable for its military precision. A three-page spreadsheet, stamped “AT&T Proprietary (Internal Use Only),” detailed how the desserts were to be deployed to each of the 63 commission offices: four dozen were assigned to the enforcement bureau, 10 dozen to the wireless divisions, 12 cupcakes to each of four commissioners, and 18 to the chairman, and so on.

As it turns out, AT&T had begun its $39 billion courting of T-Mobile about the same time. The resulting deal, announced a week ago, would transform the industry if approved. It would narrow the field of major wireless providers to three and vault AT&T into the No. 1 spot, ahead of Verizon; consumer advocates say the combination will lead to higher prices.

As interested parties lobby for and against the merger, one person will be pulling at the levers of power more often and with more influence than anyone else, according to both friends and foes: AT&T’s chief lobbyist, James W. Cicconi. A master strategist, Mr. Cicconi internalizes the art of regulatory and legislative war — and Operation Cupcake is but one of the efforts to come out of his shop…

In 13 years at AT&T, Mr. Cicconi has helped guide the company through roughly a dozen mergers, large and small, and he has made his share of enemies in Washington. As a testament to his power, however, few of them will criticize him on the record…

Nor is Mr. Cicconi’s lobbying effort a one-man show. He oversees a division that spent $115 million on lobbying over the last six years, putting it among the top five corporate spenders in the country, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks lobbying and campaign spending.

AT&T employs an army of outside lobbyists, including at least six prominent former members of Congress, including the former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, and former Senator John Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat.

Two of the sleaziest politicians who ever lived.

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AT&T has announced a definitive agreement to buy Deutsche Telekom’s American T-Mobile subsidiary in a cash and stock deal worth about $39 billion, and giving the German carrier an 8 percent stake in AT&T…

T-Mobile and AT&T share similar GSM and UMTS/HSPA networks, and both are working to build new next generation networks using HSPA+ and LTE. However, obtaining the rights to radio spectrum and building out these networks is both expensive and complex.

AT&T’s chief executive Randall Stephenson said the deal “provides a fast, efficient and certain solution to the impending exhaustion of wireless spectrum in some markets, which limits both companies’ ability to meet the ongoing explosive demand for mobile broadband…”

T-Mobile adds 33.7 million subscribers to AT&T’s network of of about 95.5 million, creating a total of about 130 million users, and becoming the largest American carrier. The deal will also expand Apple’s iPhone to three of what were the top four US carriers, as Apple has already brought it to Verizon earlier this year.

RTFA for the details. Fascinating – and expanded choices for anyone who owns or intends to own a GSM mobile device. In our market in northern New Mexico, we had held off on buying any iPhones or 3G iPads because of the requirement of dealing with AT&T. Their service is mediocre here at best. T-Mobile has been our personal choice for cellular service for years.

One of the best analysts in the world on the dynamic mobile market is Om Malik. Here’s a link to his analysis as the story broke. Not especially optimistic.

Three of the top four U.S. mobile service providers — Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile USA — are working together to build a network that would let consumers pay for goods with their phones.

Their Isis joint venture, which was formally announced on Tuesday, plans to take market share from dominant payment networks Visa and MasterCard, which currently process most U.S. credit and debit card payments. Sources told Reuters on Monday that an announcement was imminent.

Isis said the network would use Discover Financial Services’ national payment network at its roughly 7 million U.S. merchant partners and that Barclaycard U.S., a unit of Barclays Plc is expected to be the first lender on the network to offer mobile payment products.

“We’re a competitive alternative” to Visa and MasterCard, Isis CEO Michael Abbott told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Abbott, a former GE Capital credit cards executive, was named chief executive of the venture…

The idea behind mobile payments is for consumers to be able to wave their phone at a machine to pay for items such as train tickets, potentially eliminating the need to carry a wallet…

The venture is a coup for Discover, the fourth-place U.S. processing network, which is trying to take market share after long lagging Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

This already rocks in Japan. We all know the single most effective way for this to catch on in the United States. It’s ging to have to save someone some money.

Don’t expect to see this in anything smaller than a big box store for a number of months.

Technology that improves mobile phone reception indoors is starting to break into the mass market as operators struggling with network congestion have started to distribute these devices for free.

A femtocell is a small, low-power indoor base station for 3G mobile phone networks, enabling operators who struggle with network capacity to improve indoor coverage at a much lower cost than the alternative of adding more large mobile phone towers.

The emerging femtocell market has so far remained a small business partly due to the high costs of technology, but this year the wholesale price has dropped below $100, enabling operators to give them away for free.

Google-backed Ubiquisys — one of the top firms in the new market — told Reuters it expects millions of femtocells using its technology to be sold next year, compared with 2010 volumes in hundreds of thousands…

“There have been some launches since summer and a few operators have started giving them away free to customers, like AT&T in some cities,” he said…

In addition to Ubiquisys, major technology firms like Cisco , Samsung Electronics, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei make femtocells.

The devices are plugged into a customer’s broadband Internet connection, like a wireless Internet base station, and allow users to make calls or use data services with their regular 3G mobile phones.

With near $100 smartphones starting to hit the stores, and use of video on phones starting to proliferate, most telecoms operators around the world are struggling with network capacity.

Fearful of losing customers, only a few have publicly admitted to the problem of keeping pace with data traffic, but 63 percent are experiencing difficulties, a global survey of 30 operators by telecoms software firm Amdocs showed last week.

I’m not holding my breath; but, I guess I will call T-Mobile to see if I can wangle something like this out of them.

We haven’t had a landline in years. Mostly we use Skype. But, our T-Mobile cheapo Samsung phones are what we carry for use away from a computer or iPad around Lot 4.

It is almost fun wandering through the Web bumping into bloggers who want to be known as pundits. Or even analysts. Hilarious – excepting their incompetence and lack of understanding of how the business world generally functions – couldn’t be further from their guesses at the future, a twittery fear of any corporation larger than a corner ice cream stand.

Today’s update is from Reuters and ZDNet. Not much of any punditry there, either:

Google Inc plans to sell its own cellphone direct to consumers as soon as next year, bypassing wireless operators in a rare strategic move.

Called the Nexus One and made by smartphone maker HTC, the phone will run on the search giant’s Android operating system — around which Motorola and other cellphone makers have built devices — and will be sold online, the WSJ cited persons familiar with the matter as saying.

Cellular service will have to be bought separately, it added.

Yes, most of the article was offering analysis derived from info reported in the Wall Street Journal – and so credited. So much for Rupert Murdoch’s plan for a paywall.

The “Google phone,” HTC’s Nexus One, was approved this morning by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission as model number PB99100.

The trio of filings confirm a few technical details, such as microSD expansion, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR.

The report also raises new questions about the device’s potential carrier landing spot, with support for quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE with UMTS/HSUPA on 850/1700/1900 frequencies.

Translation: Hello T-Mobile, and perhaps AT&T, too.

UPDATE: Latest news from Reuters says the phone hits the stores in January with two versions: one to be sold with contract by T-Mobile and another to be sold unlocked.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Staff at mobile phone company T-Mobile passed on millions of records from thousands of customers to third party brokers, the firm has confirmed. Details emerged after the firm alerted the information commissioner, who said his office was preparing a prosecution.

Christopher Graham said brokers had sold the data to other phone firms, who then cold-called the customers as their contracts were due to expire.

A T-Mobile spokesman said the data had been sold “without our knowledge”.

Mr Graham, who was appointed earlier this year as the watchdog responsible for safeguarding personal information, said the data breach was the biggest of its kind.

Initially Mr Graham had said he would not name the operator involved as it could prejudice a prosecution. But after phone firms 02, Vodafone, Orange, 3 and Virgin said they were not the subject of his investigation, T-Mobile confirmed it had been…

Mr Graham said investigators had been working with the company after it reported suspicions of an unlawful trade in customers’ data…

A spokesman for T-Mobile said the sale of the data had been “deeply regrettable” and that it had been asked to keep it secret to avoid any criminal prosecutions being prejudiced…

No doubt TV talking heads will be stretched to come up with a definition other than the perpetual “hacker”. You should look back into the history of white-collar crime and discover the term “thief” is still pretty sound.

The commodity may vary. The process of stealing – and selling stolen goods – remains the same.

Additional insiders have stepped forward to shed more light into Microsoft’s troubled acquisition of Danger, its beleaguered Pink Project, and what has become one of the most high profile Information Technology disasters in recent memory.

The sources point to longstanding management issues, a culture of “dogfooding” (to eradicate any vestiges of competitor’s technologies after an acquisition), and evidence that could suggest the failure was the result of a deliberate act of sabotage.

What starts out reading like high tech conspiracy theories becomes more real as you follow the details, follow the money, follow the office politics.

Ultimately, resolution of the damage done to T-Mobile, the Sidekick brand which they own, will come down to cash. Lots and lots of cash.

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Unlucky T-Mobile Sidekick owners lost their contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists and photos this weekend when Microsoft subsidiary Danger suffered a technical glitch. Not all T-Mobile Sidekick owners were impacted, and the actual extent of the data loss is unclear. However, those affected have little hope of recovering lost data, according to Microsoft.

T-Mobile said that the loss is a result of a server failure at Microsoft, which acquired startup company Danger in February 2008. Danger operates the cloud computing service that stores the information for T-Mobile Sidekick customers…

Microsoft stresses that it wasn’t its own technology to blame in the Sidekick data loss, but rather Danger’s technology, which the Redmond company inherited when it acquired Danger in 2008 for $500 million.

However, the embarrassment for Microsoft comes as there is no apparent backup of Sidekick users’ data, according to a report from HipTop3. It is also unclear whether Microsoft will be able to recover any of the lost customers’ data.

That’s not Cloud Computing. That’s just being a lazy irresponsible drip.

UPDATE: It gets worse and millions of T-Mobile customers will sue, as will T-Mobile/Deutsche Telekom.