Following up on Mitch’s solid analysis of whether MCI or AT&T (as opposed to Verizon and SBC) were approached by the feds to turn over calling record data, it’s clear that AT&T (the former long distance company now part of a merged SBC-AT&T) was working in some capacity with the NSA on wire-tapping activities. In fact, a long-standing lawsuit brought by the EFF that accuses AT&T of allowing the government to tap into its lines got some courtroom action today, and AT&T lost a big fight. (More on the EFF’s case here.)
Wired News reports that a federal judge in San Francisco shot down “AT&T’s efforts to recover and suppress internal documents that a former AT&T technician says demonstrate the company’s collusion in illegal government surveillance.” The judge rejected a motion by AT&T that would have, if granted, forced EFF to return documents from an AT&T whistleblower, which the telco claims contain trade secrets and other proprietary information.
Wired News actually posted some of the documents in question and they’re a fascinating read. Mark Klein, the technician formerly employed by AT&T, seemed to have memorialized for himself (and others) troubling activities going on at the telco while he worked there. Although I can’t quite figure out what these documents exactly are, they seem to be akin to “memos to the file.” Here’s one excerpt:
I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic.
Here’s another example:
In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.
While much of Klein’s discussion is focused on the technical set-up of the wiretapping activity, he returns again and again to the “secret room” which only people who had NSA security clearances were allowed to enter.
The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the “secret room,” which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company’s endless “downsizings,” but he was quickly replaced by another.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:40 PM | Print | Comments (0)
In the strange bedfellows department, the concept of network neutrality has gained two new supporters. The first: the Christian Coalition of America, which has the boring yet offensive tagline of “America’s Leading Grassroots Organization Defending Our G-dly Heritage.”
The Coalition announced today it supports network neutrality laws. Chairperson Roberta Combs raised a good point (whether political speech might be affected by broadband providers’ two-tiered Internet plans) using an ugly example. In a statement Mrs. Combs said:
“Under the new rules, there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they don’t support. What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it doesn’t like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, they could slow down the pro-life web site, harming their ability to communicate with other pro-lifers - and it would be legal.”
On a lighter note, the musician Moby (yes, the musician Moby) has thrown his weight behind Rep. Ed Markey’s proposed network neutrality legislation. In fact, Moby, Markey and SaveTheInternet.com will be hosting a press conference tomorrow at 1 pm to announce a new initiative “Artists and Musicians for Internet Freedom.”
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:59 PM | Print | Comments (1)My reading of Cynthia’s lucid post and the documents she links to leads me to agree with her speculation that “the feds were approaching only leading long distance voice carriers.”
The AT&T response denies “wiretapping,” which is is not what the USA Today story claimed, so that denial is not especially meaningful. It also says AT&T does not give customer info “without legal authorization.” This could be read to mean that the company (presumably the original AT&T, not SBC) provided information and believed they had legal authorization based on Administration arguments as to legality. As I read this, it’s not really a denial that AT&T provided call data.
And the Verizon statement says:
One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls.
Maybe Verizon wasn’t approached, but MCI was.
This is false. From the time of the 9/11 attacks until just four months ago, Verizon had three major businesses – its wireline phone business, its wireless company and its directory publishing business. It also had its own Internet Service Provider and long-distance businesses. Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records from any of these businesses, or any call data from those records. None of these companies – wireless or wireline – provided customer records or call data.
This still leaves open the possibility that MCI was approached. All of the above appears to describe Verizon’s business at that time, not MCI’s.
Another error is the claim that data on local calls is being turned over to NSA and that simple “calls across town” are being “tracked.” In fact, phone companies do not even make records of local calls in most cases because the vast majority of customers are not billed per call for local calls. In any event, the claim is just wrong. As stated above, Verizon’s wireless and wireline companies did not provide to NSA customer records or call data, local or otherwise.
This part of the statement focuses even more specifically on local calls, which again leaves open the possibility of MCI being contacted and providing data. And given that the entire statement does not seem to even mention MCI’s business, I’m tempted to read it as confirming that MCI was contacted and did provide long distance calling data.
Again, Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program.
This last statement leaves open the possibility that today’s Verizon, which DOES include the former MCI, may in fact have “a relationship to the classified NSA program.”
And, as Cynthia noted, Qwest has acknowledged it was contacted.
The BellSouth calling data is harder to make sense of. The WSJ reported that “In a statement, USA Today said: ‘Sources told us that BellSouth and Verizon records are included in the database.’”
My only speculation that could sort of reconcile this with our working theory is that some records involving BellSouth local phone numbers were included in the data provided by one of the major IXCs, and the details of the situation got a bit muddied in the translation (which seems clearly to be the case here, at a minimum).
I don’t know if anyone else has come up with this same conclusion, but I’d bet a few bucks that Cynthia got it right and that we’ll be hearing something along these lines from USA Today after it does a little more digging.
Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 6:21 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Most cable companies view their nascent but rapidly growing VoIP-based voice services as cash flow generators. As a consequence, they don’t want to treat voice as a commodity nor do they wish to engage in price competition. But, Long Island-based cable operator Cablevision, which doesn’t always march to the industry’s tune, clearly hopes to snag market share by offering prices that are lower than those of competitors.
The company announced this morning a flat-rate plan for international calls that gives customers 500 minutes of overseas calls per month for a price of $19.95, or $.04/minute, cheaper than most comparable services out there. AT&T, for example, has an unlimited international calling plan that costs $49.95/month.
Joe at TechDirt is right on target when he says this move is probably just another competitive reaction to Skype’s free phone calling announcement and Vonage’s upcoming IPO. But Joe is probably (although not certainly) off the mark when he says that other cable operators will follow suit.
Cablevision continues to demonstrate that they get the appeal of the triple play. While other broadband operators think of it as a way to raise prices and tack on charges, Cablevision realizes that the appeal to the consumer is in adding features and cutting prices. Eventually, the other operators will have to realize that this strategy actually works.
Cablevision has gone its own way on a host of issues, including a la carte, while the rest of the industry has stood pat. Cable operators like their 40% cash flow margins on the voice business too much to starting cutting prices, or engage in price competition, just yet.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:27 PM | Print | Comments (1)Following a week of public outrage over supposed massive phone call record collection by the NSA, the notion that the phone companies handed over volumes of private individual call records to the feds is starting to sound…well, not true.
BellSouth earlier this week denied ever having done such a thing. Now both Verizon and AT&T are saying the same thing. (Verizon statement posted at WSJ here.) In fact, both companies say they weren’t even approached by the NSA to turn over phone calling records.
According to this WSJ piece, AT&T has said
it “does not allow wiretapping without a court order nor has it otherwise given customer information to law enforcement authorities or government agencies without legal authorization.”
This whole uproar was started by an article in USA Today, and it looks like the paper is coming under some scrutiny for the veracity of its piece.
In a statement, USA Today said: “Sources told us that BellSouth and Verizon records are included in the database. We’ve read the statements by BellSouth and Verizon and all we can do is continue to investigate and pursue the story. We’re confident in our coverage of the phone database story, but we won’t summarily dismiss BellSouth’s and Verizon’s denials without taking a closer look.”
What possibly gets USA Today off the hook here is that Qwest has admitted it was approached by the NSA about calling record collection efforts. The telco says it spurned the agency’s pursuit of these data.
Qwest, however, has a long-haul network and it’s possible the feds were approaching only leading long distance voice carriers, particularly in the two or three years following September 11. If that’s the case, the government could have also approached MCI and AT&T — two long distance voice companies only recently acquired by Verizon and SBC, respectively.
“How do you explain that BellSouth and Verizon were not asked but Qwest was asked? It may be because Qwest has a long-haul network, and thus is in a different position than those two companies,” said Philip J. Weiser, a University of Colorado law professor and former Justice Department telecommunications specialist.
Further complicating the picture is the government’s defense of such activity following the publication of the article.
In a CNBC interview, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while declining to comment on the USA Today report, said the courts have deemed phone-company records as not being protected by privacy laws. “These are business records,” he said. “There are no reasonable expectations of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:27 PM | Print | Comments (0)
YouTube came out of nowhere and rose like a rocket and now the race is on to replicate YouTube’s success. AOL yesterday unveiled a social networking service that is a YouTube-inspired offering.
The beta service is called AOLUncut and the reviews are already Unkind. The bottom-line criticism: Uncut is derivative and can’t expect to catch up with the innovative original.
Over at TechCrunch Michael Arrington says that this is typical of big company thinking these days — take a pioneer’s success and emulate it.
I am seeing an increasing trend of the big guys simply copying what successful startups are doing. AOL with this product and AIM Pages. Google with Google Notebook and a flurry of other projects, etc. The only large company that is even experimenting with unproven concepts at this point is Microsoft with its various Live.com ideas. I’d like to see more experimenting at the big company level.
Unfortunately, while that may have worked in years past with standard consumer products, the Internet and social networking and Web 2.0 applications are different creatures entirely. Google has learned this lesson - the company announced today that its Google Video service (which really isn’t a YouTube imitator but is nonetheless compared to YouTube nowadays) is being upgraded to be more like YouTube.
Among the enhancements are a retooling that eliminates the need for users to download special software so that they can upload videos. Google will also shorten the lag between the time a user uploads a video and when that video appears on the site.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:44 AM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of the 463, this not-to-be-missed video of Ask a Ninja about net neutrality produced by SaveTheInternet.com.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 11:31 AM | Print | Comments (0)Cable movie network and online film distribution pioneer Starz Entertainment is in the hunt for a telecom partner to help it expand its online film service. But this latest twist entails the wider distribution of content that Starz owns by virtue of its acquisition of animation and action film company IDT Entertainment.
Starz parent company Liberty Media announced yesterday that it has a deal to purchase IDT Entertainment for $186 million plus debt assumption. The acquisition of IDT Entertainment will give Starz the ability and rights to experiment with online distribution programming that it doesn’t have with its existing web-based service, Vongo.
“With the acquisition of IDT Entertainment, we can experiment with all kinds of releases, so maybe it makes sense to release in home video, theaters and online all at once,” [spokesman Tom] Southwick said.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:29 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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