Prison Phone Monopoly Securus Under Fire Again, This Time For Doling Out Everybody's Private Phone Location Data

from the don't-pass-go,-don't-collect-$200 dept

For years now we've noted how a company by the name of Securus has managed to obtain a pretty cozy, government-supported monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services. Like any monopoly, this prison monopoly has pretty traditionally resulted in not only sky high rates upwards of $14 per minute for phone calls, but comically poor service as well. It's something advocates (like outgoing FCC staffer Mignon Clyburn) have been trying to rectify for years, only to have Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai completely deflate those efforts last year.

But Securus' monopoly -- and the government pampering and cronyism that helped create it -- has other additional costs as well. Interstate inmate calling service (ICS) companies effectively buy their privileged positions from local governments, who then expect some favors in return. For example, Securus was recently accused of routinely spying on privileged inmate attorney communications, information that was only revealed after Securus was hacked in late 2015. Given the generalized apathy for prison inmates and their families ("Iff'n ya don't like high prices, don't go to prison son!") reform on this front has been glacial at best.

Meanwhile, the problems caused by these government-sanctioned monopolies continue to pile up. A recent court case has also exposed how some law enforcement officials also make routine use of a Securus service that helps track people’s cellphones without court orders. While the service is marketed to government as a way for law enforcement to track fleeing drug treatment or even Alzheimer's patients, zero oversight means it's routinely abused. In this case, the law enforcement official used the Securus service to not only track members of the general public, but Judges and other law enforcement officials as well:

"The service can find the whereabouts of almost any cellphone in the country within seconds. It does this by going through a system typically used by marketers and other companies to get location data from major cellphone carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, documents show.

Between 2014 and 2017, the sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used the service at least 11 times, prosecutors said. His alleged targets included a judge and members of the State Highway Patrol. Mr. Hutcheson, who was dismissed last year in an unrelated matter, has pleaded not guilty in the surveillance cases."

In addition to being another warning about the threat of government-pampered monopolies, the scandal again highlights how our nonexistent to lax consumer privacy laws (especially for wireless carriers) routinely come back to bite us. In this instance, Securus was easily able to buy cell carrier location data, then upload it to a company portal. Law enforcement officials can then easily plug in a cell phone number to track its location, provided they supply an "official document giving permission." Overview of the validity of these documents appears to be half-assed at best.

We've long noted that wireless carriers routinely sell browsing, location and other data to absolutely everyone, and while these companies insist that "anonymizing" the data protects user identities (it doesn't), the rules governing the use of such data are laughable at best. Efforts to then pass more meaningful privacy protections then get quickly and repeatedly scuttled by influential lobbyists, as companies fight tooth and nail against any measures that could possibly hamstring user data monetization efforts.

As you might expect, Securus took no ownsership of the scandal or the routine abuse of private data:

"Securus requires documentation and reasonably relies on the professionalism and integrity of our law enforcement customers and their counsel. Securus is neither a judge nor a district attorney, and the responsibility of ensuring the legal adequacy of supporting documentation lies with our law enforcement customers and their counsel."

Senator Ron Wyden, meanwhile, has fired off a letter to FCC boss Ajit Pai (pdf), lamenting the fact that the oversight of this entire process is the glorified equivalent of a "pinky promise":

"I recently learned that Securus Technologies, a major provider of correctional-facility telephone services, purchases real-time location information from major wireless carriers and provides that information, via a self-service web portal, to the government for nothing more than the legal equivalent of a pinky promise. This practice skirts wireless carrier's legal obligation to be the sole conduit by which the government conducts surveillance of Americans' phone records, and needlessly exposes millions of Americans to potential abuse and surveillance by the government."

Securus is the perfect storm created by lax privacy rules, rampant cronyism, the government's tendency to pamper and embolden monopolies, and the routine skirting of wiretap and privacy law by corporations and law enforcement alike.

Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, law enforcement, location data, prison, prison phone calls
Companies: securos

T-Mobile Hires Ex-FCC Commissioner To Claim Its Competition-Killing Merger Will Be Really Great For...Farmers

from the synergies,-yo dept

As we've discussed, the looming Sprint T-Mobile merger is going to be decidedly ugly for American consumers. Global history has shown repeatedly that when you reduce the number of total competitors from four to three, you proportionally reduce any incentive to truly compete on price. Analysts have also predicted that anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 retail, management, and administrative employees will lose their jobs as the bigger company inevitably eliminates redundant positions. Of course like any American merger, the two companies' CEOs have spent much of the last week trying to claim the exact opposite.

Still, it's going to be an uphill climb for Sprint and T-Mobile to sell regulators on the deal, even for an administration that seems to take pride in undermining consumers and small businesses. To try and sell it, Sprint and T-Mobile have been trying to make the claim that the only way to ensure we have the fifth-generation (5G) networks of tomorrow is if we sign off on their competition-eroding megamerger:

"It is critically important that America and American companies lead in the 5G era. Early U.S. leadership in 4G fueled a wave of American innovation and entrepreneurship that gave rise to today’s global mobile Internet leaders, creating billions in economic value and job growth. America’s early 4G leadership is credited with creating 1.5 million jobs and adding billions to the U.S. GDP. With 5G, the stakes are even higher – because 5G will be even more transformational."

This plays in handily to the Trump administrations protectionist efforts to ban Chinese companies from the American market in order to "win the 5G race." The problem is that 5G isn't some magic wand. While it will provide us with faster, lower latency and more resilient wireless networks, it's not going to magically cure the fact that American broadband is ranked somewhere around 62nd in speed, and consumers pay some of the highest rates for mobile data in the developed world thanks to a telco monopoly over the fiber lines that feed cellular towers.

Both T-Mobile and Sprint had been making it clear for months that they could deploy 5G easily and independently of each other. Suddenly we're being told that these next-gen networks are only made possible if we sign off on a deal history tells us will be arguably terrible for anybody other than AT&T, Verizon and SprinT-Mobile, who'll all have less motivation to engage in real price competition post merger.

To try and sell this "only merging can deliver next-gen networks" argument, T-Mobile this week hired former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell to make the same point in an op/ed over at Fortune:

"The T-Mobile-Sprint merger will benefit our country and all Americans. From a farmer in Nebraska using 5G technology to better track crop conditions, to a small business owner in New Hampshire looking to sell products in the global marketplace, to a smart city with autonomous vehicles, all of us will depend on 5G. We can’t afford to lose the global race to develop this remarkable technology."

In the piece's fine print you'll find that McDowell is now a paid T-Mobile advisor, which is a nice shift from outlets that can't be bothered to highlight op/ed author financial ties to industry. Again though, there's nothing "magical" about 5G that helps create smart cities, next-gen agricultural tools, and the automated cars of tomorrow. Those technologies can still thrive on 4G networks, and again, while 5G is going to provide some notable evolutionary improvements, it's not some kind of mystical panacea, and its impacts on our overall economy are being absurdly over-hyped by companies eager to sell networking hardware.

There's numerous problems in the wireless sector that will persist throughout the "5G revolution," none of which get magically eliminated by reducing competition and killing tens of thousands of jobs. The merger doesn't magically fix AT&T and Verizon's backhaul monopoly. It doesn't address the fact that Americans pay more for wireless data that countless other developed nations. And it certainly doesn't solve the problem of regulatory capture, which is why American broadband (fixed or wireless) tends to be such a comical shitshow in the first place.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, farmers, fcc, lobbying, mergers, robert mcdowell
Companies: sprint, t-mobile

AT&T Continues Fight To Gut FTC Authority Over Broadband Monopolies

from the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too dept

For years, massive broadband providers (and the lawmakers and think tankers paid to love them) have repeatedly stated that gutting net neutrality and FCC oversight of ISPs is no big deal because the FTC will rush in and protect consumers. When ISPs like Comcast convinced the Trump FCC to kill net neutrality, they repeatedly proclaimed that the FTC would step in and ensure that nothing bad would happen. When ISPs lobbied Congress to kill off some modest consumer privacy protections, again they proclaimed that this was no big deal because the FTC would ride in and keep consumers safe from monopoly bad behavior.

But while ISP lobbyists are claiming that neutering the FCC is a great idea because the FTC will fill the void, they consistently "forget" to mention that AT&T has been busy in court trying to gut FTC authority over ISPs entirely. You'd think that's kind of important to mention, but large ISP mouthpieces are understandably busy these days, so perhaps it just got lost in the lobbyist paperwork shuffle.

AT&T's legal gambit began when the FTC sued AT&T back in 2014 for lying to customers about the company's throttling practices. You'll recall that AT&T had been waging a not-so-subtle war on unlimited data users as it tried to drive them to more expensive, metered plans. Amusingly, AT&T lawyers tried to argue in court that the company's "common carrier" status -- the same status it has fought viciously against on the net neutrality front -- exempted it from FTC authority almost entirely under Section 5 of the FTC Act. As we noted at the time, it was a very clever Schrodinger-esque tap dance.

At the time, the FTC issued a warning stating that should AT&T lawyers be successful, any company with a common carrier component (from Google to oil conglomerates) could tap dance around FTC oversight. Those without such components could simply buy or merge with a small company with a common carrier component to nab the same benefit. This, the FTC warned, would create a massive accountability and enforcement gap regarding corporate America.

Fortunately for consumers, AT&T's legal efforts have seen mixed results. AT&T won a major ruling in the case back in August of 2016, but the FTC won the most recent federal appeals court decision. Undaunted, AT&T made it clear this week that this is a battle it intends to take to the Supreme Court:

"AT&T intends to file a petition for certiorari in the Supreme Court" by the deadline of May 29, according to a joint case management update filed last week. An AT&T victory could leave many ISPs in a regulation-free zone. The Federal Communications Commission in December 2017 voted to eliminate net neutrality rules and relinquish its authority to regulate ISPs as common carriers. One of the FCC's justifications for deregulating the broadband market was that the Federal Trade Commission can force ISPs to uphold their net neutrality promises."

The goal remains little to no oversight of some of the least-competitive and most anti-competitive American companies in any industry. What could possibly go wrong?

It's worth reiterating that even if the FTC wins this case, the agency remains a pale echo of the FCC when it comes to holding giant ISPs accountable. The FTC lacks rule-making authority, is already over-extended, and can only hold an ISP accountable if it can clearly prove the ISP engaged in "unfair or deceptive" behavior. That's something that's particularly problematic on the net neutrality front when anti-competitive behavior is routinely hidden behind bogus claims of routine network management.

Granted if you really like growing monopolies running amok, this plan should be right up your alley. But if you realize that removing already pretty tepid oversight of an uncompetitive and broken telecom industry could cause vast irreparable harm to consumers and smaller businesses alike, then this is a case you most certainly should be keeping an eye on.

Filed Under: broadband, fcc, ftc, net neutrality, oversight, privacy
Companies: at&t

Following Facebook, Verizon Quietly Backs Off Opposition To Modest California Privacy Rules

from the sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant dept

If you missed it, large ISPs like Verizon, with the help of the Trump administration and GOP, worked to quickly kill FCC privacy protections before they could take effect last year. Those rules were arguably modest by any measure, simply requiring that ISPs transparently disclose what data is being collected and who it's being sold to, while providing users working opt out tools (or opt in tools if dealing with sensitive consumer financial data). Those rules, you'll recall, were only proposed after ISPs repeatedly made it clear they were utterly unwilling and unable to self-regulate on the privacy front.

ISPs like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast were given ample leeway on privacy for years. Our reward was covert efforts to track users around the internet without telling them, and repeated efforts to charge users more if they wanted to protect their own privacy. Large ISPs had every opportunity to avoid regulation and self-regulate. They showed us repeatedly this was beyond their capabilities. Limited broadband competition routinely protected them from any repercussions, and revolving-door regulators have now completed the circle of dysfunction.

Much like we're seeing on net neutrality, this hostility to real consumer privacy protections on the federal level resulted in multiple states devising their own consumer protections. Like in California, where lawmakers attempted to push a privacy law that largely mirrored the FCC's effort. And while Google, Facebook, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon will all breathlessly tell you they support meaningful privacy reform, the EFF documented in great detail how they worked together last year to quietly scuttle the initiative. Largely by lying about what it actually did:

"One of the most offensive aspects of the misinformation campaign was the claim that pretending to restore our privacy rights, which have been on the books for communications providers for years, would help extremism...In materials like this advertisement, the opposition lobby claimed that A.B. 375 would result in a deluge of pop-ups that consumers would have to click through, and that in turn this inundation would create a sort of privacy fatigue. Consumers would stop caring, and cybersecurity would suffer.

Comcast, Facebook, Verizon and Google all donated $200,000 each to help hamstring the effort. And while successful, they're now facing another push for a new, very similar initiative that should show up on California voter ballots this November. Again, despite industry face-fanning and pearl clutching there's not much that's controversial about it (you can read more about the act here), with the primary goal being transparency and ensuring consumers have the ability to opt out.

But when the Cambridge Analytica story broke, and actually caring about privacy became en vogue for a brief moment, the public spotlight forced Facebook to quietly slink away away from its opposition to the effort in California. Now Verizon, who is trying to make inroads in marketing via its Oath subsidiary (the combination of AOL and Yahoo), has also been forced to quietly back off opposition in the wake of media attention. A Verizon spokesperson makes it clear that, much like the net neutrality fight, the company's goal is to lobby for weak federal protections that pre-empt tougher state ones:

"Verizon has decided not to continue with the coalition so that we can focus our efforts on creating a national framework for privacy and related issues -- and not a state-by-state approach," a spokesman says."

Again, all of these giant companies will breathlessly tell you they support meaningful privacy protections for consumers. But the reality is that any effort to empower and inform consumers erodes revenues, since it will increase the chance that users opt out of data collection and monetization efforts. That's why no matter how frequently you'll see companies like Verizon and Facebook insist they're interested in "solutions" to the wild west that is currently consumer privacy, it remains routinely difficult to take them seriously in any meaningful capacity.

Filed Under: california, fcc, ftc, isps, privacy, transparency
Companies: facebook, verizon

While Facebook Gets All The Hate, Verizon Continues To Show It's No Better, And Potentially Much Worse For Privacy

from the broader-context-please dept

Facebook certainly deserves ample criticism for its lax privacy standards and its decision to threaten news outlets that exposed them. That said, we've noted a few times now that the uneven press fixation on Facebook obscures the fact that numerous industries routinely engage in much worse behavior. That's particularly true of broadband providers (and especially wireless carriers), who routinely treat consumer privacy as a distant afterthought, with only a fraction of the total volume of media hyperventilation we saw during the Facebook kerfuffle.

Facebook's casual treatment of your data isn't some errant tech industry exception, it's the norm, making #quitFacebook an arguably pointless gesture if you still own a stock mobile phone. In the telecom industry, a disdain for consumer privacy is a cornerstone of their entire business model(s). Companies like AT&T and Verizon aren't just bone grafted to our government's domestic surveillance apparatus, they collect and sell everything from browsing to location data to absolutely anyone and everyone--with little to no real oversight, and opt out tools that may or may not actually work.

Verizon has been particularly busy on the anti-privacy front. You'll recall that the company was fined by the FCC for modifying wireless user data packets to track users around the internet without telling them. The company was engaging in this behavior for two years before security researchers even discovered it, and it took another six months of media criticism for Verizon to offer a simple opt out. Despite the wrist slap, a more powerful variant of this technology is still very much in play at Oath (AOL & Yahoo), Verizon's effort to compete with Google and Facebook in the media advertising wars.

Not long after that, Verizon played a starring role in gutting modest FCC privacy rules protecting consumers (spurred in part by Verizon's tracking tech). Those rules, which Verizon lobbyists dismantled last year, simply required that ISPs be transparent with what data they're collecting and who they're selling it to. When California tried to mirror the FCC's discarded privacy policies, Verizon, Facebook and Comcast lied to lawmakers, falsely claiming that modest privacy protections would harm children, increase internet popups, and embolden extremism. None of it was true.

More recently, Verizon has been facing numerous lawsuits over Yahoo hacks that exposed the data of roughly three billion consumers. And while this was before Verizon's ownership (Verizon wasn't informed of the hacks during negotiations, netting it a $350 billion discount), the company has since been actively trying to prevent customers from suing Oath (Yahoo) or Verizon over future breaches by using fine print to mandate binding arbitration:

"The new Oath terms of service "contain a binding arbitration agreement and class action and jury trial waiver clauses..., which are applicable to all US users," the terms say.

Congress has considered legislation to ban many mandatory arbitration clauses, but it hasn't followed through yet and the practice remains legal.

The AOL terms already contained a binding arbitration clause and class-action waiver before Verizon bought that company. But the Yahoo terms didn't previously contain such clauses."

Thanks to AT&T's Supreme Court victory in 2011 using contract fine print to erode consumer legal rights is now something we view as the norm. And while everybody can agree that the class action system has numerous problems, the system of binding arbitration is a terrible solution. Under binding arbitration, the arbiter rules for the company they work for the vast majority of the time, leaving consumers shit out of luck. While class actions often only net lawyers a nice new boat, they at least occasionally result in substantive change. Arbitration, in turn, is often more like consumer theater than justice.

The reality is that informed and empowered consumers are more likely to opt out of efforts to monetize their online behavior. And however breathlessly companies like Verizon and Facebook pretend to be dedicated to consumer privacy or policy solutions, they're going to fight tooth and nail against any policies -- even reasonable ones -- that could potentially hamstring that revenue. But however bad Facebook is and has been on privacy, Verizon routinely offers a master class when it comes to undermining efforts at anything even vaguely resembling a solution.

Filed Under: ads, arbitration, fcc, privacy, surveillance
Companies: facebook, verizon

Small ISPs Like Sonic Join The Legal Battle To Preserve Net Neutrality

from the capped-and-throttled dept

The coalition attempting to reverse the Trump FCC's attack on net neutrality continues to grow. INCOMPAS, a trade group representing a number of smaller ISPs like Sonic and RCN, says it has filed a Petition (pdf) in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia challenging the FCC's misleadingly-titled "Restoring Internet Freedom" Order. INCOMPAS joins Mozilla, Vimeo, numerous consumer groups and 23 state attorneys general in claiming that the FCC violated agency policy when it ignored the public, ignored the experts, and decided to give a sloppy wet kiss to the nation's entrenched broadband monopolies.

While FCC boss Ajit Pai frequently tries to claim that the FCC's modest net neutrality protections were a terrible burden on small ISPs, his claims pretty routinely aren't supported by actual facts and hard data (remember those?). In a statement, INCOMPAS members make it clear that giving entrenched monopolies like AT&T and Comcast free rein to abuse a lack of broadband competition in creative new ways isn't going to end well for them:

"The American people do not want the internet to look more like cable, where prices rise, customer service falls, and gatekeepers control what you watch, read and pay...As we watch the AT&T-Time Warner antitrust trial unfolding, it’s clear large ISPs fear a competitive streaming marketplace. Their desire to gobble up content, rather than creating it from scratch, is a sign that anti-competitive interconnection practices and paid prioritization schemes are on the horizon unless strong net neutrality protections are preserved."

And while AT&T and friends like to pretend that the rules derailed their ability to be "innovative," you might recall Sonic CEO Dane Jasper told us how the rules are only really a "regulatory burden" if you're engaging in anti-competitive behavior. And in his own statement, Jasper reiterates the fact that if you're a small business owner that doesn't support net neutrality, you're doing it wrong:

"Net neutrality has always been critical for small businesses and start-ups to compete in the internet age. When the FCC eliminated those protections, it opened the door for large, incumbent ISPs to use their gatekeeper position to put a stranglehold on innovation and competition. As an ISP, Sonic believes every American should have access to fast and affordable internet. The repeal of net neutrality threatens this vision, and we’re proud to support INCOMPAS in challenging the FCC’s disastrous Order in Court."

We're in for a quiet stretch here before the legal fight begins (likely sometime this summer), but when the case begins we should get some interesting additional insight into the numerous, laughable efforts the industry and FCC engaged in to try and downplay massive public opposition to their policy ploy. In the interim, we've noted how ISPs are busy trying to pass fake net neutrality law in the hopes of pre-empting states laws and preventing the 2015 rules from being re-established should the FCC lose in court.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, isps, net neutrality
Companies: incompas, rcn, sonic