AT&T's Long History Of Fraudulent And Abusive Behavior Apparently Of No Concern To The NSA
from the when-we-say-'trusted'-partner,-we-mean-we-'trust'-it-will-give-u dept
As we recently covered, ProPublica (in conjunction with the New York Times) published another set of documents exposing AT&T's long-running position as Alfred to the NSA's bulk collection Batman. The documents contained glowing quotes from various NSA operatives and officials touting the telco's subservience.
“highly collaborative!”For a company not exactly famous for its customer service, AT&T is probably eyeballing these glowing pull quotes and trying to figure out how to spin them into positive PR. Not only are many AT&T customers unhappy with their provider, but the rest of the government is less than impressed with AT&T's actions.
"extreme willingness to help!"
“This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”
"...access to massive amounts of data!"
The FCC recently decided to start doing its job re: AT&T's routine abuse of its customers. It went after the telco giant for turning a blind eye to rampant fraudulent abuse of an IP relay service set up to assist the hearing impaired (yes, the metaphor is clunky) -- something that had gotten so bad it was estimated the program's relay traffic was about 5% legitimate service and 95% scammers. Late last year, the FCC also cracked down on AT&T for its symbiotic relationship with shady services which offered "premium" garbageware that was billed monthly to unaware cell phone users for indefinite periods of time. AT&T was in no hurry to end this, despite customer complaints, because it netted about 35% of the total haul. And in May of this year, AT&T settled with the FCC for misappropriating federal funding meant to provide phone service to low-income households.
[T]he FCC has announced that it has struck a settlement with AT&T and former subsidiary SNET, over charges the companies were collecting undeserved subsidies under the agency's "Lifeline" program, a low-income community subsidy effort created by the Reagan administration in 1985 and expanded by Bush in 2005. According to the FCC's findings, AT&T apparently "forgot" to audit its Lifeline subscriber rolls and purge them of non-existent or no-longer-eligible customers, allowing it to continue taking taxpayer money from a fund intended to aid the poor.And this is only what the FCC has actually addressed over the past few years. AT&T's sketchy behavior traces back to well before its national security obeisance was a twinkle in the intelligence community's eye.
So, the agency tasked with national security claims its favorite "partner" is a scammy, bloated, abusive corporation. It makes a certain amount of sense. The NSA doesn't care how badly AT&T treats everyone else, just as long as it still makes feeding the agency data and communications one of its top priorities. And as for AT&T's apparent lack of a functioning spinal column, it turns out there's really only one backbone that matters in the surveillance world: the one that "belongs" to the internet.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: competency, nsa, surveillance
Companies: at&t
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Two words and an awfuk lot of context.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Two words and an awfuk lot of context.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
Keith Alexander just hates it when corporations serve the profit motive.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Just imagine how NSA loves Google! Snowden says it gives NSA "direct access". But just ignore that (like every other day) to run a second hit on AT&T within hours.
Writers at Techdirt never criticize The Google. -- Why? Because it's a "sponsor".
Techdirt hates some corporations, loves others. Were eight or nine listed as giving NSA "direct access" which ALSO deserve ongoing scorn. Why don't they get it?
Again, if Techdirt ever even mentioned the largest source of data to NSA, Google, specifically designed for SPYING on everyone full-time, only then might I believe Techdirt is actually against the surveillance state as such.
The constant omission is intentional: one CAN'T frequently write on spying without at least considering what Google does! So Techdirt is saying spying is good when it's Google handing data over to NSA. But they're ALL globalist corporations with same aim of a corporatized total surveillance state.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Just imagine how NSA loves Google! Snowden says it gives NSA "direct access". But just ignore that (like every other day) to run a second hit on AT&T within hours.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Care to back that up with some citations, Blue?
All I've ever heard was that, unbeknownst to Google, the NSA was performing man-in-the-middle attacks on Google traffic when it traveled between Google's data centers. Google has since encrypted that traffic.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
He's referring, incorrectly, to the original news releases about the PRISM program, which is the program under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, that allows the FISA Court to order companies hand over *specific* information to the NSA. In order to "facilitate" this, a list of nine companies set up systems by which they would upload that information to a local computer system that the NSA could then access directly.
Because some reporters noted that it gave the NSA "direct access" some interpreted it -- incorrectly, as Blue does here -- that the NSA had "direct access" to backroom servers for these nine tech companies, including Google. This was wrong. What it meant was that they had direct access to grab the *specific information* that was highlighted in a court order from the FISA court, reviewed by the lawyers at these tech companies, and for the content not challenged, uploaded to servers for the NSA (and FBI) to collect it.
Many of us have tremendous problems with this program, and contrary to what the commenter above claims, have spoken out against the 702 program and why it needs to be fixed. Such as here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140702/06315727755/privacy-civil-liberties-board-mostly-unconcer ned-about-prism-backbone-tapping-nsa.shtml
But what is being discussed here, with AT&T is entirely different than PRISM or what the commenter thinks was revealed about Google and other tech companies. This goes WAY WAY WAY beyond that on multiple levels. First, this is *voluntary* and not based on a court order. Second, this is much broader in coverage, handling full upstream collections and not just targeted accounts and information. Third, AT&T has much greater access handling content and connections well beyond customers of AT&T thanks to its role with backbone/interconnection.
All of this has been explained before, but this particular commenter chooses to remain ignorant for reasons on s/he understands.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Military Intelligence
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
I take it you've never actually either read or seen any of the many portrayals done of Batman over the years. It's always been an important part of the story line that he's a vigilante, something that law enforcement has traditionally shied away from. You owe Alfred an apology too. He has never done anything wrong and has earned his place far more than many sidekicks or administrative supporters.
The NSA, on the other hand, isn't even in the same league with vigilantes. It's far more like that couple of tons of wood and metal on wheels rolling around and smashing into things at random below deck as its ship rocks with the ocean waves. You know, like partnering with damned near criminal businesses like AT&T.
I've got to wonder if they're envious of the CIA's infamous reputation and are now trying to catch up.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
"SBC completes purchase of AT&T: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/10100350/ns/business-us_business/t/sbc-completes-purchase-att/
"AT&T Inc. began its existence as Southwestern Bell Corporation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T
"One national brand and acquistion of AT&T Corporation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SBC_Communications#2000.E2.80.932005:_One_national_brand.2C_and_acquis ition_of_AT.26T_Corporation
Learn to check your assumptions. AT&T Corporation imploded. What we now know as AT&T was Southwestern Bell, aka SBC.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Who hated the process of due
The things that he paid
All got NSAed
And frightened blue gave out a poo
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
At least be honest enough to include the relevant part of the Wikipedia quote when making your assertions:AT&T didn't "implode" so much as it "reconstituted" itself to its former pre-breakup conglomerate glory.
[ link to this | view in thread ]