Coalition Members Call for an End to Cell Phone Censorship
December 11th, 2007 by tkarrMembers of the SavetheInternet.com Coalition today urged the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit cell phone companies from blocking or interfering with text messages sent over their networks.
In a petition to the agency, Public Knowledge, Free Press, U.S. PIRG, Media Access Project, Consumers Union and the New America Foundation said that the companies should treat text messaging like spoken phone conversations — delivering all information to their customers without censorship.
Surprisingly, phone companies like Verizon and AT&T still reserve the right to block your text messages or terminate your cell phone services “without prior notice and for any reason or no reason.”
Text Speech Not So Free
Unless the FCC steps in, free speech could very well end at your cell phone.
That’s why Verizon recently got away with blocking text messages that NARAL Pro-Choice America wanted to send to its members.
While Verizon blamed this incident on a “dusty policy,” which was quickly rewritten, the carrier has steadfastly refused to relinquish its authority to censor future speech over the company’s networks.
Free Press has also sifted through AT&T agreements and found explicit language that reserves their right to cut off messages, block or permanently cease to provide services to anyone — and for no reason.
Verizon’s decision to allow NARAL members to receive messages is a far cry from what is really needed — guaranteed free speech for the millions of Americans who rely on text messaging to contact one another.
“For many people, texting has replaced calling as a way of keeping in touch,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge. “The FCC should make certain that text messages, and the short codes used to dial them, are protected from interference from telephone companies.”
Free Speech Is Not a Whim
In response to today’s petition, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps told the Washington Post that recent examples of wireless censorship are proof that stronger rules are needed to keep companies from discriminating.
Mobile carriers can and still decide arbitrarily which customers get to use text messages, refusing service to those they find controversial or who compete with their business. “This type of discrimination would be unthinkable and illegal in the world of voice communications,” today’s petition states. “It should be so in the world of text messaging as well.”
As more and more people rely upon wireless networks to communicate, we need to revisit the issue of free speech and ensure that it is protected wherever it occurs in text messaging, phone calls, e-mails or over the Internet
At the moment, free speech over cell phone networks used by more than 230 million Americans can be denied at the whim of Verizon and AT&T.
Unless the FCC explicitly prohibits discrimination on all these platforms, the censorship policies of the carrier cartel are what we can expect to see time and again.
December 12th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Please.
You can say ‘Free Speech!’ as much as you like, but this is a red herring as used in the context of your article. The actual meaning of the term (and you should be offended that this needs to be pointed out) pertains to the protection of speech rights from infringement by government - not private companies. Indeed, you are free to say anything you like, just make sure you’re using your own equipment.
Ironically, you incorrectly (and misleadingly) misuse a principle intended to protect one type right (speech) to argue for the government-enforced destruction of another type (property).
So the real question is: are you actually this clueless, or do you just assume your readers are?
December 13th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
ATBM you’re confusing the First Amendment with other free speech protections in law. Yes, the First Amendment protects free speech by prohibiting Congress from making a law that abridges “the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
But free speech was also protected under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, which granted the FCC the authority to ensure that phone companies provide access to data on a non-discriminatory basis. In other words, information service providers cannot block lawful content merely because they dislike it. At least that was how the rule applied until it was struck from the books in 2005. This fight is about restoring Title II protections to all speech over digital media — cell phones, the Internet, text messaging, everywhere.
Despite what you may think, it’s a fight worth having. A vibrant marketplace of ideas on new media cannot function if we allow corporate censorship. This is an important and ongoing debate in communications policy.
Perhaps you should gain a rudimentary grasp of the laws in question before you assume some expertise on the issue. One wouldn’t want to appear foolish.
December 14th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Your snide sarcasm fails to impress. You can claim that Title II says such and such, but I don’t suspect you have actually read it. At the very least it does not appear that you have understood it.
“…granted the FCC the authority to ensure that phone companies provide access to data on a non-discriminatory basis. In other words, information service providers cannot block lawful content merely because they dislike it.”
It requires no such thing - you would be correct, had you written:
“…granted the FCC the authority to ensure that phone companies provide service on a non-discriminatory basis. In other words, information service providers cannot deny service to groups, locales, or persons merely because they dislike what race/creed/etc. they are.”
Indeed, Title II does not address discrimination against content, but against persons.
“This fight is about restoring Title II protections to all speech over digital media — cell phones, the Internet, text messaging, everywhere.”
Again, the speech rights you claim simply do not exist. In fact, it is not speech that you’re arguing for at all, but a kind of ‘right to be transmitted’. This is simply ludicrous - if you disagree with the way your service provider handles your data, then do as you should and cancel your contract. There is no need to bring the FCC into the equation (apparently you don’t see it, but this is most definitely the last thing you want to do).
Most importantly, you fail to grasp the basic principle of the issue. There are only two possibilities:
a. providers are private entities
b. providers are organs of the State
In the former case, freedom of association dictates that they cannot justifiably be forced to transmit content of any kind. I say justifiably because of course in this country they are, i.e. EBS, etc. - but I hold that this is only Constitutional when performed on a completely voluntary basis. I do not need to comment on the ramifications of the latter, were it to be fully implemented - realize that your movement means to bring us one step closer.
I do understand the emotional component to your position - it doesn’t feel right to be censored by anyone. Of course, I am not for censorship of any kind (quite the contrary), but preventing it by stepping on others’ rights is an anti-solution. Just as one of us cannot claim the right to dictate the use of another’s property, neither can (er, should) the majority - we contract with these companies, we do not own them. Rather than running to the FCC to solve your supposed problem, your organization should vote with its’ feet - nobody is forcing you to use any given provider. If the support for your cause is great, then so is your collective bargaining position - why not use it directly? Furthermore, why is it not possible for you to establish a service provider of your own in which you can enforce any data-transmission policy you see fit? (well, I suppose that FCC rules do make that exceedingly difficult - and yet you lobby for more?)
Still, if you could, you’d find me right there defending your absolute right to do so.
December 14th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
No one is trying to impress you ATBM, just set you straight.
You’re entitled to disagree with our notion that digital communications need free-speech protections under law. Simply put, however, your definition of free speech is wrong.
You said: “The actual meaning of the term … pertains to the protection of speech rights from infringement by government — not private companies.”
That may be a loose definition of the First Amendment, but it’s certainly not a definition of free speech.
We believe that communications law needs to include free speech protections under law. Extending Title II (Yes, I have read it. And not just in the last couple hours.) protections to all digital communications is a good start. I’m open to other legal protections to free speech over digital media as well.
I happen to think the biggest threat to free speech in the digital age comes from corporate gatekeepers — like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — as much as it does from government.
You may not like the idea — and you’re entitled to your opinions — but to call us “clueless” casts more of a reflection on yourself than it does on those of us who want to protect the free flowing Internet.
December 14th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Actually,it appears that ‘clueless’ was a touch charitable - and I doubt that you’re really all that concerned with how I’m perceived.
So I’m entitled to disagree. I see, and my definition is wrong.
Well, I’m not so flexible with definitions: to infringe on an actual right requires that the transgressor possess power of coercion; anything less is a matter of contract and mutual consent. This is why free speech cannot be so loosely defined as you would have your readers believe; i.e. as far as I know, when I quit paying my Comcast bill in protest, nobody is going to be showing up at my door in a Comcast flak jacket to take me away. If that were the case - show me the dotted line - I’ll give all I’ve got and all I can borrow to further your movement. But this is not the case, so exactly how is it that you figure they owe you anything beyond that which you’ve agreed upon?
I’m certain that you may ‘think’ a great many things about companies like those you listed, but the fact still remains that you (neither in the individual nor the collective sense) have no rightful claim over their property or the manner in which they operate. Period. Again, I am very curious to hear the logic (actual logic, mind you) by which you arrive at the opinion that you do. Keep in mind, claiming unfairness is not actual logic. Nobody was ever born with the right to a ‘free flowing Internet’ - if the one we’ve got isn’t free enough for you, go build your own.
As far as ‘extending Title II protections’, remember - it was you who introduced this aspect with no specific reference, so please explain exactly which section you wish to extend - I am quite eager to be schooled by you. It is necessary that there first be a protection to extend, and I am still curious as to exactly what that might be. Just please don’t do yourself the disservice of responding in platitudes and generalities again.
Finally, we may be entitled to differing opinions, but the difference between them is not really so benign as one might be tempted to think. My opinion is simple, and states plainly that I have no claim over your person or property - this is the entirety of my view. Your view is not so simple, allowing for the possibility of arbitrary claims over me and my property, the nature of which may be determined on a case-by-case basis, according to your current definition of ‘rights’. In the end, if I refuse to yield myself or my property to your current set of demands, you will only be able to secure my compliance by means of physical force. The evidence of this is clear: which one of us is currently looking to the only source of legally coercive force to implement our view?
I’m no pollyanna - I know that these competing views will always exist, I only hope that you can be intelectually honest with yourself regarding the basis of what you actually believe, and how far you are really willing to go to get it.
December 14th, 2007 at 11:26 pm
When you’ve built such a strong base focused on the internet, I’m stunned you’re ignoring the greatest threat to the internet already underway: “Trusted, secure computing” to deconstruct the internet as we know it and reconstruct its architecture under government control. Hopefully after reading about this there’ll be some interest and ideas about how to fight back:
US Plans to ‘Fight the Net’ Revealed
by Adam Brookes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm
Friday, January 27, 2006 by BBC
Federally Funded Plans To Scrap The Internet
Seeking further funding from Congress for “clean slate” projects
by Steve Watson
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WAT20070418&a
Microsoft Palladium: Next Generation Secure Computing Base
http://www.epic.org/
The Dangers of Digital Imprimatur
John Walker
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ The name refers to his belief that it’s possible that nothing would be allowed to even appear on the Internet without having a proper technical authorization….
A concurrent step would be the adoption of “trusted computing,” a system by which not only people but computer programs would be stamped with identifying marks. Those would link with certificates that determine whether programs are uncorrupted and cleared to run on your computer.
The best-known implementation of this scheme is the work in progress at Microsoft known as Next Generation Secure Computing Base (formerly called Palladium). It will be part of Longhorn, the next big Windows version, out in 2006. Intel and AMD are onboard to create special secure chips that would make all computers sold after that point secure… The giants of Internet commerce are eager to see this happen. “The social, economic and legal priorities are going to force the Internet towarsecurity,” says Stratton Sclavos, CEO of VeriSign, a company built to provide digital certificates (it also owns Network Solutions, the exclusive handler of the “dot-com” part of the Internet domain-name system). “It’s not going to be all right not to know who’s on the other end of the wire.” Governments will be able to tax e-commerce—and dictators can keep track of who’s saying what.
Walker isn’t the first to warn of this ominous power shift. The Internet’s pre-eminent dean of darkness is Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University guru of cyberlaw. Beginning with his 1999 book “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace,” Lessig has been predicting that corporate and regulatory pressures would usurp the open nature of the Net, and now says that he has little reason to retract his pessimism. Lessig understands that restrictive copyright and Homeland Security laws give a legal rationale to “total control,” and also knows that it will be sold to the people as a great way to stop thieves, pirates, malicious hackers, spammers and child pornographers. “To say we need total freedom isn’t going to win,” Lessig says.[…]
from the Summary and Conclusion of John Walker’s The Dangers of Digital Imprimatur
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/
A Fresh Start for the Internet
Stanford University researchers aren’t just dreaming of a new Internet: they’re building it.
By Rachel Ross
March 19, 2007
http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/18397/
“Trusted Computing”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1H7omJW4TI
WHAT IS TCPA? WHY SHOULD YOU GIVE A DAMN?
http://www.againsttcpa.com/what-is-tcpa.html
A NET OF CONTROL
Unthinkable: How the Internet could become a tool of corporate and government power, based on updates now in the works
Christoph Niemann for Newsweek International Issues 2004
By Steven Levy
Clearly control of information and communications is critical to the broader U.S. strategy for global domination undertaken under pretext of a GWOT — below are just a few of the many documents available on the internet, also my website at http://www.burbankdigest.com/node/53
1997: THE GRAND CHESSBOARD: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives
Zbigniew Brzezinski, NYC, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997
“…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)
“Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalition…American policy must focus on Eurasia as a whole and be guided by a Geostrategic design.” (p.197) “That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could eventually seek to challenge America’s primacy…” (p. 198)
“In the long run, global politics are bound to become increasingly
uncongenial to the concentration of hegemonic power in the hands of a single state. Hence, America is not only the first, as well as the only, truly global superpower, but it is also likely to be the very last.” (p.209) “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” (p. 211) …
The U.S. Empire’s New Middle East Map:
Ethnic cleansing to control the oil, creating sectarian divisions to split Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia to control the oil rich provinces
http://www.oilempire.us/new-map.html
Secret Pentagon “Roadmap”
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 177
http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB177/index.htm
1997 US Army War College: “WE HAVE ENTERED AN AGE OF CONSTANT CONFLICT’
We are entering a new American century, in which we will become still wealthier, culturally more lethal, and increasingly powerful. We will excite hatreds without precedent. There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing….we will win […] http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/97summer/peters.htm
P20G: Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism
From the Moscow Times, Nov. 1, 2002.
Darkness Visible: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism is Now in Operation
From the Moscow Times, Jan. 25, 2005. This is the follow-up to “Into the Dark.”
http://collectioncf72.blogspot.com/2005/04/darkness-visible-
pentagon-pla…
The Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq
Andrew Tilghman, The Washington Monthly
… After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting al-Qaeda as the number one
threat to peace and stability in Iraq … When the White House singles out al-Qaeda in Iraq for special attention, the bureaucracy responds by creating procedures that hunt down more evidence of the organization. The more manpower assigned to focus on the group, the more evidence is uncovered that points to it lurking in every shadow. “When you have something that is really hot, the leaders start tasking everyone to look into that,” explains W. Patrick Lang, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former head of Middle East intelligence analysis for the Department of Defense. “Whoever is at the top of the pyramid says, ‘Make me a briefing showing what al-Qaeda in Iraq is doing,’ and then the decision maker says, ‘Aha, I knew I was right.’”
multiple Iraqi insurgent groups target U.S. forces, with the aim of driving out the occupation. But once our troops withdraw, most Sunni resistance fighters will have no impetus to launch strikes on American soil… no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans’ fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11….
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=36103
Washington’s consensus al-Qaeda deception
By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2210.shtml