It seems so rare to find anyone of integrity and purpose among the ruling elite of our nation today. We have become a democratic state of cynics, ruled by cynics. We see ulterior motives in every action, every vote, and every speech. The result of this cynicism is that our representatives, our nation’s leaders, believe that provincial notions such as law, justice, and equality are simply maudlin platitudes to be thrown about between kissing infants on the campaign trail. So when integrity rears its head within the stinking milieu of our national politics it is literally stunning to behold.
The past few weeks have been filled with consternation for those of us involved in telecommunications and civil liberties issues. This week, two of the major issues came to a head: FISA reform and Telecom Immunity. Senator Reid (D) announced last week that he would violate Senate traditions, ignoring Senator Dodd’s hold, and bring the highly flawed Bush administration FISA bill, S.2248, to a vote. Aside from expanding warrantless, unsupervised, surveillance, the bill would grant retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies which may have broken the law repeatedly over the past six years. Senator Dodd vowed he would filibuster the bill.
While numerous Democrats claimed they opposed the bill and telecom immunity — including Sen. Reid– few actually stood to oppose it. Sens. Clinton, Biden and Obama found they could not leave the diners and palm pressing of Iowa to return to Washington to perform the job they were elected to do. My own Senator, Durbin (D), refused to answer my inquires or discuss his position on the bill. But Senator Dodd sped from the campaign trail to defend the principles of the fourth amendment and equality under the law. While I listened to the floor debate on Monday, I was both infuriated, by the obvious mendacity of those standing for the bill, and inspired by the integrity of Sen. Dodd and those few who stood with him. In the end, Senator Reid was forced to withdraw the bill until next year. For those of us involved in this issue, it was as close to a moment of true democracy that we have seen in ages. Nearly magical.
I have written several times in the past about AT&T’s questionable treatment of content in order to further their own business agenda. Now comes word that AT&T is officially enshrining their policies in their Terms of Service agreement with AT&T users. As Slashdot reported a few days ago, the updated ToS includes the following terms:
AT&T may immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your Service, any Member ID, electronic mail address, IP address, Universal Resource Locator or domain name used by you, without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes (a) violates the Acceptable Use Policy; (b) constitutes a violation of any law, regulation or tariff (including, without limitation, copyright and intellectual property laws) or a violation of these TOS, or any applicable policies or guidelines, or (c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.
The breadth of this statement is amazing. As AT&T partners with the Chinese government, would it now be a violation of an AT&T service agreement to criticize the Chinese government? Could one have their DSL connection terminated for publicly questioning their telephone bill?
The AT&T apologists and defenders immediately jumped on this change of the ToS, claiming, once again, that this is obviously an over-reaching mistake by some middle manager, and that, under common-carrier laws, the ToS is unenforceable and would be struck down in court. My response to these people, the same one’s who claimed the Pearl Jam incident was simply an over-reaction by a middle manager, is to ask: how many of these anti-consumer actions does it take constitute evidence of a subtle or general anti-consumer corporate policy? one?, three?, twelve?, twenty? Let me know an I will assemble the requisite documentation. As to the issue of common-carrier regulations, commentators are correct that under those regulations AT&T must remain neutral to general content. However, it is most likely that should push come to shove that AT&T will claim itself to be a Media Organization not held to common-carrier standards. After all, no one would expect Viacom to carry content which damaged their brands, why should AT&T?
There are a number of people whom I respect who disagree with me on the issue of Net Neutrality. Most of them believe that market forces will respond and correct any anti-consumer moves by Internet providers. I believe this would be true, if there existed diverse competition in the marketplace. The problem remains that a very few number of large carriers control last mile access to the Internet. Among these carriers there is little geographic competition, except in major urban centers. Opponents of neutrality site RF distribution as a way to alleviate this problem. However, given the FCC’s recent rulings on the spectrum auctions it seems most likely that the same large companies which control hardline distribution will end up in control of the RF spectrum as well. As congress has done very little to mitigate media and telecommunications consolidation, and will certainly not address this issue in the near future, the only solution left is to impose a Network Neutrality law upon Internet carriers. It is the only solution left for an industry which appearing more and more monopolistic every day is not afraid to flex it muscles on content control.
Johannes Ullrich over at SANS, reminded me of an increasing threat to the telecommunications and power infrastructure: copper and fiber theft. Odd as it seems, we have arrived at a point where people are robbing both construction sites and critical infrastructure of copper in order make a few bucks. Over the past few months several people have been hurt or killed while trying to harvest copper wire from live electrical lines. There is, of course, some kind of sad darwinian justice to these injuries, but the overall success of these thieves seems to be quite high.
Recent copper thefts have caused major phone, Internet, and video outages for Time Warner, AT&T, Verizion, and other carriers. It has gotten so bad, that at the beginning of this month AT&T and Time Warner have started offering rewards for information regarding the thefts, and Pennsylvania and other states are working to pass new metallic theft laws.
Copper prices have been at their highest levels for the past couple of years and scrap copper has been hanging around $3.40/lbs. The high prices are primarily due to the construction boom in the US, and infrastructure modernization in China and throughout Asia. Yes, this is the global trading village where one can pillage copper phone lines from one country, re-mold it to new wire, and sell it to another.
There is something both frightening and sad about people ripping apart their own infrastructure for a few dollars a pound. This problem seems much more prevalent then one would imagine and I wonder if it is a sign of the times, or simple a new avenue of common thievery.
It seems so rare to find anyone of integrity and purpose among the ruling elite of our nation today. We have become a democratic state of cynics, ruled by cynics. We see ulterior motives in every action, every vote, and every speech. The result of this cynicism is that our representatives, our nation’s leaders, believe that provincial notions such as law, justice, and equality are simply maudlin platitudes to be thrown about between kissing infants on the campaign trail. So when integrity rears its head within the stinking milieu of our national politics it is literally stunning to behold.
FISA, justice, telecom
