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!”
"extreme willingness to help!"
“This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship.”
"...access to massive amounts of data!"

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.

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.

Filed Under: competency, nsa, surveillance
Companies: at&t