Tag: AT&T

Bipartisan bill in Senate introduced to end NSA bulk telephone records collection

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Democratic and Republican U.S. senators introduced legislation on Wednesday to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ communication records and set other new controls on the government’s electronic eavesdropping programs.

The measure introduced by Democrats Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Richard Blumenthal, and Republican Rand Paul, is one of several efforts making their way through Congress to rein in sweeping surveillance programs…

“The disclosures over the last 100 days have caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system,” said Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for tighter privacy controls, told a news conference.

The surveillance programs have come under intense scrutiny since disclosures this spring by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously known.

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AT&T saves decades of call records for the DEA

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DEA agents – or AT&T employees?

For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.

The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

The project comes to light at a time of vigorous public debate over the proper limits on government surveillance and on the relationship between government agencies and communications companies. It offers the most significant look to date at the use of such large-scale data for law enforcement, rather than for national security.

The scale and longevity of the data storage appears to be unmatched by other government programs, including the N.S.A.’s gathering of phone call logs under the Patriot Act. The N.S.A. stores the data for nearly all calls in the United States, including phone numbers and time and duration of calls, for five years.

Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say; technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record. Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.

The slides were given to The New York Times by Drew Hendricks, a peace activist in Port Hadlock, Wash. He said he had received the PowerPoint presentation, which is unclassified but marked “Law enforcement sensitive,” in response to a series of public information requests to West Coast police agencies.

The program was started in 2007, according to the slides, and has been carried out in great secrecy.

“All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” one slide says. A search of the Nexis database found no reference to the program in news reports or Congressional hearings.

The Obama administration acknowledged the extraordinary scale of the Hemisphere database and the unusual embedding of AT&T employees in government drug units in three states.

But they said the project, which has proved especially useful in finding criminals who discard cellphones frequently to thwart government tracking, employed routine investigative procedures used in criminal cases for decades and posed no novel privacy issues.

Crucially, they said, the phone data is stored by AT&T, and not by the government as in the N.S.A. program. It is queried for phone numbers of interest mainly using what are called “administrative subpoenas,” those issued not by a grand jury or a judge but by a federal agency, in this case the D.E.A.

The government will offer up blather about success at shutting down drug dealers. Worthy of one more ironic slow clap. Success arrived at by compromising the privacy of the citizens of a supposedly free country is crap. Government self-praise floating atop a cesspool of corrupt practices is just one more signal of imperial power clasped to the bosom of power-hungry politicians.

Relying on one of our royal corporations to store and dole out information on every citizen smacks of one more sci-fi prediction come true. Corporate networks functioning as the best ally of a potentially fascist state ain’t exactly something worth bragging about. Even though that will be the response from hacks in both parties now that Drew Hendricks has turned up one more Big Brother watchdog in our lives.

American coppers demanded 1.3 million cell records last year

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Police are monitoring Americans’ cellphone use at a staggering rate, according to new information released in a congressional inquiry.

In letters released by Rep. Edward J. Markey cellphone companies described seeing a huge uptick in requests from law enforcement agencies, with 1.3 million federal, state and local requests for phone records in 2011 alone…

The data obtained by law enforcement in some requests included location information, text messages and “cell tower dumps” that include any calls made through a tower for a certain period of time. The carriers say the information is given away in response to warrants or emergencies where someone is in “imminent” danger.

“There is no comprehensive reporting of these information requests anywhere,” Markey’s office said in a statement. “This is the first ever accounting of this…”

The growth of cellphone use, private computing and social-media use in recent years has greatly expanded the wealth of information available to law enforcement agencies in investigations, a development in which police investigative abilities have expanded faster than the public has been able to keep track of the extent to which it’s being watched…

“The numbers don’t lie: location tracking is out of control,” Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the ACLU, noted in an analysis of the new data.

Anyone going to ask the coppers for a solid reason that can be tracked back in case some ordinary citizen wishes to complain about surveillance? Come on. Let’s hear it from the all-American patriotic Constitution-defending voices of corporate telecommunications.

How about the prosecutors and district attorneys who are always telling us of their devotion to the Bill of Rights, eh? Or is it up the the very few members of Congress with a conscience and commitment to something more than papier-mache liberty?

The Black Helicopter crowd among American geeks has it wrong!

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This just in from Geneva: The United Nations has no plans to seize control of the Internet. The Web-snatching black helicopters have not left the hangar.

Internet conspiracy theorists will be disappointed. The latest one, fueled by “open Internet” groups, Internet companies like Google and some U.S. lawmakers, was that mouse-clicking bureaucrats at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, supported by governments suspicious of the United States, were scheming to take over the Internet itself.

The plot went something like this: At a meeting in December of an obscure U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, Russia, China and their ilk would try to wrest oversight of the Internet away from the loose collection of public and private organizations that do the job now…

By last month these fears had grown so fevered that U.S. lawmakers introduced a resolution calling on the government to block proposals that “would justify under international law increased government control over the Internet and would reject the current multistakeholder model that has enabled the Internet to flourish…”

Of course, all of that translates as “it’s OUR internet and Johnny Furriner better stay hands off!”

Time for a reality check. Documents prepared for the December meeting, which leaked out last week — yes, on the Internet — show that there are no proposals to hand governance of the Net to the I.T.U…

The draft being prepared for the meeting, set to take place in Dubai, includes several Internet-related provisions, including measures to counter spam and bolster cybersecurity…But the draft includes no proposals to change the Internet’s core governance functions, which are handled by groups like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Engineering Task Force and the World Wide Web Consortium. ICANN, for example, oversees the domain name system while the later groups develop and maintain technical standards.

“It’s unfortunate that the Congress is spending so much valuable time on something that isn’t even on the table,” said Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the I.T.U. “There is no single reference to Internet governance in the preparation document…”

The real conflict is not over governance of the Internet, some analysts say, but over the division of the spoils, with international telecommunications operators trying to use the I.T.U. to extract revenue from American Internet companies.

Golly. You don’t really think that honorable and open companies like Google or AT&T might try to stir up geek paranoia just to aid their bottom line – do you?

Would Congress actually participate in stupid phrase-mongering, the ringing of alarums in the middle of the night, wasting taxpayer money on unnecessary scares over foreign intervention over a God-given American property?

Bite your tongue!

Judge awards $850 to iPhone user in AT&T throttling case

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When AT&T started slowing down the data service for his iPhone, Matt Spaccarelli, an unemployed truck driver and student, took the country’s largest telecommunications company to small claims court. And won.

His award: $850.

Pro-tem Judge Russell Nadel found in favor of Spaccarelli in Ventura Superior Court in Simi Valley on Friday, saying it wasn’t fair for the company to purposely slow down his iPhone, when it had sold him an “unlimited data” plan.

Spaccarelli could have many imitators. AT&T has some 17 million customers with “unlimited data” plans who can be subject to throttling. That’s nearly half of its smartphone users. AT&T forbids them from consolidating their claims into a class action or taking them to a jury trial. That leaves small claims actions and arbitration.

Late last year, AT&T started slowing down data service for the top 5 percent of its smartphone subscribers with “unlimited” plans. It had warned that it would start doing so, but many subscribers have been surprised by how little data use it takes for throttling to kick in —often less than AT&T provides to those on limited or “tiered” plans.

Spaccarelli said his phone is being throttled after he’s used 1.5 gigabytes to 2 gigabytes of data within a new billing cycle. Meanwhile, AT&T provides 3 gigabytes of data to subscribers on a tiered plan that costs the same — $30 per month.

When slowed down, the phone can still be used for calls and text messaging, but Web browsing is painfully slow, and video streaming doesn’t work at all…

Companies with as many potentially aggrieved customers as AT&T usually brace themselves for a class-action lawsuit. But last year, the Supreme Court upheld a clause in the Dallas-based company’s subscriber contract that prohibits customers from taking their complaints to class actions or jury trials.

Just in case you thought the sleazy array of Republicans added to the Supremes in the last couple of decades would never come up with decisions that affect your daily life. Add a moneygrubber corporation decision like this – to the Citizens United crap decision which says a corporation is just another person when it comes to bankrolling politicians.

Greedy bastards like AT&T can stand on one foot for a couple centuries while individuals try to take their cases through small claims court one at a time. A couple hundred bucks means a lot more to ordinary working folks than beancounters shuffling lawyers on retainer through local courts on a platoon system designed to screw us all.

Senate defeats Republican effort to crush Net Neutrality

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New U.S. Internet traffic rules cleared a hurdle on Thursday, surviving an attempt by the Senate to block them from taking effect later in the month. President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats in the Senate blocked a Republican-backed resolution to disapprove of the Federal Communications Commission’s rules on “net neutrality.” The vote was 52-46 against the resolution.

Adopted by a divided FCC last December, the rules forbid broadband providers from blocking legal content while leaving flexibility for providers to manage their networks.

The rules still face a court challenge. Lawsuits by Verizon Communications Inc and others have been consolidated before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The Senate resolution was championed by Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, and had 42 co-sponsors, all Republican. A similar measure passed the Republican-led House of Representatives in April…

The FCC’s rules allow consumers and entrepreneurs to utilize the Internet “without having to ask permission from their broadband provider,” Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said on Wednesday.

Backers of net neutrality say big providers could otherwise use their gatekeeper role to discriminate against competitors.

Republicans continue to frame their crap attempts to restrict public access to the Web. Requiring communications to be ruled by backwards corporations like Verizon and AT&T, offering the same old ideology, lies that try to credit freedom, jobs and the American Way of Life as dependent on corporate control.

They wish it were so. And there is only a small margin of conscience keeping them at bay.

Which corporate telecom giant stores your data the longest?

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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.

T-Mobile — We already have a million+ iPhones on our network

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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.

AT&T lobbying starts with cupcakes – and includes a lot more

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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 is buying T-Mobile for $39 billion

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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.

OK – aside from the new availability of hardware and increased network access across the country, what will this mean for consumers? In the opinion of many, we’re more likely to be screwed by higher prices, narrower opportunities for software and app developers.

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.