Verizon and AT&T’s attempts to sweep away the controversy over cell phone censorship isn’t working.

Despite their best spin, another message is getting through: Phone companies can’t be trusted to protect free speech.

As we’ve reported here and elsewhere, this is a story that goes beyond one outrageous case of blocking a text message.

New York Times: ‘Textbook Censorship’

The New York Times responded today with an editorial calling on Congress and the FCC to set new standards that “bar interference with text messaging.”

“Alarm bells should be ringing on Capitol Hill, where industry lobbying, legislative goldbricking and Republican aversion to regulations have bottled up much-needed laws on digital communications,” Times editors write, singling out Verizon’s effort to block text messages sent from national NARAL Pro-Choice America.

That Verizon can still get away with blocking cell phone messaging should be a call to arms for everyone who believes free speech is a cornerstone of good democracy.

Speech over traditional phones is protected under the “common carrier” rule, which guarantees that all “traffic” gets access to the lines without discrimination. “Common Carrier” was the rule that protected Net Neutrality over the Web until the FCC and courts — under a steady assault from telecom lobbyists seeking to clear a legal path for private toll roads on the Web — struck it down.

“The Verizon policy was textbook censorship,” the Times editors add. “Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian.… If Verizon had attempted it on normal phone lines, it would have been violating common carrier laws that bar interference with voice transmissions. Unfortunately, those laws do not apply to text messaging.”

This sentiment is echoed in a column today by Vindu Goel of the San Jose Mercury News, and an editorial late last week at the Los Angeles Times.

“I don’t blame the carriers for wanting control. They’ve invested billions of dollars in building their networks,” Goel writes. “But the government — which represents you and me — has given them a license to use public airwaves. The phone companies have a responsibility to allow broad access to their services.”

FCC Leaks and the Revolving Door

The Times called upon the FCC to act, while acknowledging that the agency has long been held captive to the interests of phone companies. That conclusion is supported by a GAO report released today that found FCC officials routinely leaking information to phone companies to give them a leg up on influencing critical decisions at the agency.

That many former FCC officials are guaranteed cushy jobs at blue-chip telecommunications lobbying firms goes a long way toward explaining the special treatment. What’s not measured is the incalculable damage this insider trading has on the public.

Congress Must Take the Lead

Corruption at the FCC “means Congress will have to take the lead, as it must on other issues affecting the mushrooming world of digital communications,” according to the Times.

While some members of Congress have already protested recent cell phone censorship, they need to take this one step further – by convening hearings into the matter and affirming our legal commitment to free speech on the Internet, over cellphones, everywhere.

“Our democracy is built on basic freedoms not being left to individuals, or individual companies,” the Times editorial board writes. “Freedom of speech must be guaranteed, right now, in a digital world just as it has been protected in a world of paper and ink.”

Amen.

If you thought phone companies were simply supposed to get you connected, think again. Over the last week we learned that the nation’s two largest telecommunications firms want to get into the business of censorship as well — blocking the free flow of information over phones and the Internet.

Verizon’s notion of “progress” may not agree with your notion of free speech

We saw an unsettling example of just how bad this can get last week. Verizon Wireless blocked text messages that national pro-choice group NARAL wanted to send to their members. That they reversed the decision after the censorship was exposed should offer little comfort.

While they may have scrambled to fix one “dusty policy” and let these messages through, we can see in the details of this and other episodes a worrisome pattern of abuse. And it’s not just at Verizon. Over the weekend, the technophiles at Slashdot exposed what many of us failed to read in the fine print of our AT&T customer agreements.

Censorship Is in the Details

Deep in its “terms of service” for high-speed services AT&T had buried this tidbit: The phone company may “immediately terminate or suspend all or a portion of your service … without notice, for conduct that AT&T believes … tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

We have since sifted the agreements of other access providers and found even more explicit language over at Verizon: The company “reserves the right and sole discretion to change, limit, terminate, modify at any time, temporarily or permanently cease to provide the Service or any part thereof to any user or group of users, without prior notice and for any reason or no reason.”

You got that?

You’re Busted!

These multi-billion dollar network giants are telling their Internet and cell phone customers this: If you want “your world delivered,” you better play nice with the phone companies.

That means no speaking out of turn against AT&T and Verizon’s slow services, high prices or anti-competitive practices.

Speak out for Net Neutrality and you could find your self on the wrong side of the digital divide. Losing an Internet connection would hit especially hard those millions of Americans in markets where the phone company is the only Internet service in town.

It gets weirder. Listed among AT&T’s “prohibited activities” are “creating or attempts to utilize a domain or domain name that is defamatory, fraudulent, indecent, offensive, deceptive, threatening, abusive, harassing, or which damages the name or reputation of AT&T.” [my emphasis]

This seems to take AT&T’s content policing one further. It is not enough that you can be disconnected for conduct that damages the reputation of AT&T, but you can lose your feed for simply visiting a Web site — or “domain” — that does the same.

Guess what? You’re doing that right now.

Free Speech Everywhere

Perhaps you think we’re making much out of nothing — that such fine print is created by lawyers to cover a company’s butt in rare, worst case scenarios.

Try thinking about it this way: If a phone company can’t tell you what to say on a phone call, then it shouldn’t be able to tell you what to say in a text message, an e-mail, a blog or anywhere else. Speech should be free wherever it occurs – on the Internet, over cell phones, on the streets – everywhere. And it should be protected.

More and more of our communications occur in digital formats. It’s time Americans safeguarded free speech in this new media with the passion that we protect it in old. A good place to start is with the two companies that control Internet and cell phone access for more than 120 million Americans.

Earlier today, my organization Free Press called on Congress to convene hearings that address phone company censorship policies. You can support this effort by writing your member of Congress and urging them to stand with the rest of us and investigate this abuse.

The biggest threat to free speech in America is public complacency. We must have this discussion about our democratic rights while we still can.

Phone lobbyists exert immense power over both Democrats and Republicans in the halls of Washington. As an alternative to opening their doors wide to AT&T and Verizon lobbyists, the least our elected officials could do for us is keep new communications open for everyone.