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
Comments on “AT&T's Long History Of Fraudulent And Abusive Behavior Apparently Of No Concern To The NSA”
Two words and an awfuk lot of context.
Strange bedfellows.
Re: Two words and an awfuk lot of context.
And one Freudian slip, evidently.
Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
So, the current AT&T (which used to be SBC before the old AT&T imploded) is a bloated, scammy corporation. How does the NSA, and their domestic tools, the FBI, know that AT&T is feeding them decent info? As the saying goes, once a spammer, always a spammer. What if AT&T is just giving a feed of gibberish in Room 641? How does the FBI/NSA tell if they’re getting good info or bad?
Keith Alexander just hates it when corporations serve the profit motive.
Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
IIRC, AT&T did not “implode” as you suggest – it was broken up by the government because it was too big.
Re: Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
Oh, please.
“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_acquisition_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.
Re: Re: Re: Scammy, bloated rat-molesting jailbirds
Oh, please.
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.
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.
First, I don’t care beans about AT&T. I’m just pointing out what’s MISSING here as usual.
Writers at BestNetTech never criticize The Google. — Why? Because it’s a “sponsor”.
BestNetTech 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 BestNetTech ever even mentioned the largest source of data to NSA, Google, specifically designed for SPYING on everyone full-time, only then might I believe BestNetTech 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 BestNetTech 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.
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.
Your employer is showing, Mr Hood.
Re: Re:
Just imagine how NSA loves Google! Snowden says it gives NSA “direct access”.
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.
Re: Re: Re:
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
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.bestnettech.com/articles/20140702/06315727755/privacy-civil-liberties-board-mostly-unconcerned-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.
Military Intelligence
There’s a reason that “military intelligence” is an oxymoron.
I don’t care about Alfred (nobody does), but you’re insulting Batman by comparing NSA to him.
Re: 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.
We need to start thinking bigger the goal of all undercover operatives is to gain assets , such as CEO’s, Whole corporations who’s to say AT&T any many other companies aren’t shell companies .
Actually I’d make the argument that AT&T is Lucius Fox. It makes alot more sense if you watched TDK and remember how they located Joker in the climax…(don’t take this too seriously!)
There once was an out_of_the_blue
Who hated the process of due
The things that he paid
All got NSAed
And frightened blue gave out a poo