Net Neutrality

The One Trick To Keep Your Phone Company From Spying On You

Posted by on August 23, 2015 at 2:23 pm. 4 Comments :

Last week an investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times was published that exposed the collaboration between the National Security Agency and America’s providers of cell phone and Internet services. The report was based in part on documents released by former agency contractor Edward Snowden. What it revealed was a tight-knit relationship between a government spy operation and the corporate telecommunications industry.

AT&T NSA Spying

The report identified AT&T as the company most closely aligned with the NSA’s operations. While Verizon and other companies were also involved, AT&T was shown to have devoted far more energy and resources to the relationship. The report says that…

“While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed NSA documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as ‘highly collaborative,’ while another lauded the company’s ‘extreme willingness to help.”

There is much more detail about the NSA/telecom complex in the report, including the hundreds of millions of dollars spent and the over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day handed over to the government. It is an astonishing and frightening series of disclosures about just how intrusive the company you’re paying every month to provide phone and/or Internet service is.

And therein lies an important way for you to fight back. There isn’t much you you can do to prevent these corporate behemoths from screwing you. Sure, you can participate in protests and write letters to your congressional representatives, and you should. But that will take time and furious organizing. The one trick you can use now to keep your phone company from spying on you is to ditch the companies that are doing it and get one that doesn’t.

Those of you who use AT&T or Verizon (and that’s most of you) have another option. CREDO Mobile is a progressive company that is committed to privacy and doesn’t favor wealthy conglomerates who can afford to pay for special treatment and to suppress competition. As an added bonus they also fight for the environment, social justice, net neutrality, and a political landscape free of Tea Party idiocy.

It’s so easy to make the switch you’ll wonder why you never did it before. You’ll get great service and a selection of the best phones. You can keep your current phone number. And they will pay up to $350.00 for any early termination fees your current provider charges. You can even try it for thirty days with no obligation. You really need to check this out because there is no reason for your hard-earned dollars to be working against you by violating your constitutional liberties and literally funding the Tea Party, the KeystoneXL pipeline, the Koch brothers, and the Greedy One Percent (aka GOP). And if you use this link, you’ll even be helping News Corpse, who will receive a modest commission for the referral.

So please take this simple step to change the world and free yourself from the shackles of corporations who are working against you and your principles. You’ll feel great for having done so. And send this link along to your friends and family as well. We can have a huge effect if we join together for something positive, rather than submitting to the corporate masters.

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Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
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And just for fun, here is John Oliver taking on “Cable Company F*ckery” in case you needed another reason to switch.

John Oliver Explains “Preventing Cable Company Fuckery” (aka Net Neutrality)

Posted by on June 2, 2014 at 10:06 am. 2 Comments :

In a hilarious rant on Network Neutrality, HBO’s John Oliver delivers about as good an explanation of the concept as I’ve ever heard (video below). Even better, he calls out the corporations and special interests who are trying to co-opt the Internet for their nefarious purposes.

Oliver hits on every bullet point in the debate including how businesses are already deliberately obstructing access; how the FCC is headed by a former cable lobbyist; how our current system is delivering worse service than third world nations; and how the cable cabal is a working monopoly.

Oliver also notes that the public discussion on the issue is impeded by the inherently dull and technical subject matter, and how opponents of Net Neutrality are exploiting that by having figured out that “the way to do something evil is to put it inside something boring.” So Oliver has a suggestion about how to frame the debate, at least in terms of the yawn-inducing identifier “Net Neutrality.”

John Oliver Net Neutrality

That’s right. “Preventing Cable Company Fuckery.” Now that’s something that can get people riled up to actually do something productive like send comments to the FCC to demand that they protect Net Neutr…er…I mean Preventing Cable Company Fuckery.

Something else you can do is to stop blindly supporting the corporations that are trying to kill the Internet (or usurp it to service their greed). Those of you who use AT&T or Verizon for your cell phone service (and that’s most of you) have another option. CREDO Mobile is a progressive company that supports an open Internet that doesn’t favor wealthy conglomerates who can afford to pay for special treatment and to suppress competition. They also fight for the environment, social justice, and a political landscape free of Tea Party idiocy.

It’s so easy to make the switch you’ll wonder why you never did it before. You’ll get great service and a selection of the best phones. You can keep your current phone number. And they will pay up to $350.00 for any early termination fees your current provider charges. You can even try it for thirty days with no obligation. You really need to check this out because there is no reason for your hard-earned dollars to be working against you by literally funding the Tea Party and the KeystoneXL pipeline and, of course Cable Company Fuckery. And if you use this link, you’ll even be helping News Corpse, who will receive a modest commission for the referral.

So please take this simple step to change the world and free yourself from the shackles of corporations who are working against you and your principles. You’ll feel great for having done so. And send this video (and this link) along to your friends and family as well. We can have a huge effect if we join together for something positive, rather than submitting to the corporate masters.

Koch Brothers Take Their Campaign To Kill Net Neutrality To Fox News

Posted by on February 5, 2014 at 8:27 pm. 2 Comments :

Last month the corporate-friendly majority on the Supreme Court struck down FCC rules that required Internet service providers (ISP) to treat all content equally. Known as “Network Neutrality,” these rules prevent companies like AT&T from providing fast service for Internet sites it favors, while impeding content from those it does not. Without Net Neutrality, you might try to access Dominoes Pizza, but your ISP could refuse that request and direct you to Papa John’s, who paid them to do so. Or they could simply slow down the connection to Dominoes so that you would give up and try some other pizzeria.

Net Neutrality insures that you are able to access any site on the Internet that you want without interference from your provider. Unfortunately, the big ISPs (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc.) oppose that freedom. They want to control your access and make either you, or the destination sites, pay them to open the highway to free-flowing traffic. Theoretically, they could just as easily obstruct your access to content they find objectionable politically, morally, or economically (i.e. their competitors).

Fox Nation

Read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for more brazen Fox lies.

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats in Congress drafted the “Open Internet Preservation Act of 2014,” with the stated goal of…

“…restor[ing]the Open Internet Rules struck down by the D.C. Circuit in January 2014 prohibiting broadband Internet service providers from engaging in discriminatory behavior or blocking content altogether.”

Within hours the conservative opposition to the bill cranked up on behalf of the corporations that bankroll them. Prominent among them was the Koch brothers who have long been aggressive opponents of an open Internet. Their fake news wire service, Watchdog.org, quickly published an article that thoroughly mischaracterized the facts and featured a deceitful headline saying “Democratic federal lawmakers really want the FCC to regulate Internet.”

By casting this as an issue of regulation, the Koch brothers seek to marshal support for their anti-Internet agenda. To the extent that this bill can be portrayed as regulation, it is a regulation that guarantees more freedom for all users of the Internet. Granted, there is somewhat less freedom for ISPs to gouge consumers and inhibit free speech. Despite the fact that the legislation was drafted by Democrats, the only member of Congress that the article quoted was arch-rightist Marsha Blackburn who said…

“It’s more than ironic that the same Administration that can’t figure out how to make Healthcare.Gov work now thinks that regulating the Internet like China and Russia will make things better for American consumers.”

Clearly Blackburn doesn’t understand either Net Neutrality or the nature of Russian and Chinese censorship. It is Net Neutrality that actually makes the Internet more open, and the lack of it that permits government and corporate interference. But she is just another Republican who is doing the bidding of her well-heeled corporate donors.

koch-news
True to form, Fox News picked up the story from Watchdog and ran it on their lie-riddled, community website Fox Nation with the headline “Dems Pushing FCC To Regulate Internet.” Fox News regularly publishes articles from the fake Koch brothers wire service that always seem to advance the interests of wealthy industrialists like the Kochs. It’s one of the perks of being rich enough to create your own “news” distribution outlet that can feed propaganda to friendly publishers like Fox.

In this case, Fox News is doing a disservice to their audience by failing to disclose the partisan interests of their source. But more seriously, they are feeding them disinformation about net neutrality that could result in a severe reduction in the freedom that has always been a part of the open Internet if Fox and the Kochs are successful.

Fight The FCC’s Phony Net Neutrality Plan

Posted by on December 2, 2010 at 10:43 am. 5 Comments :

One of the most promising signs of the early Obama administration was the appointment of Julius Genachowski to chair the FCC. There was significant hope that the days of coddling Big Media and permitting more consolidation and concentration of corporate influence was about to end. However, it is now turning into one of the most disappointing appointments as Genachowski appears to be caving on Network Neutrality, one of the most important free speech issues of this decade.

The New York Times is reporting that “Genachowski has decided not to use the commission’s telephone regulatory powers to govern broadband Internet service.” He also seems to be prepared to allow Internet service providers to engage in “paid prioritization,” which could lead to favoritism on the part of the ISPs and discrimination against smaller, independent web enterprises.

This is not exactly the sort of plan that was promised by candidate Obama in 2008. It charts a course that smothers efforts to increase broadband access while giving more control of the Internet to monopoly-minded corporations. Josh Silver of FreePress.net summarizes the ill-effects of this proposal as “a shiny jewel for companies like AT&T and Comcast.”

Net Neutrality has been a target of right-wing disinformation for several years. They wrongly portray it as anything from a new Fairness Doctrine to something out of Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia. That is how obsessed they are with defeating a proposal whose actual purpose is to protect a free and open Internet. That’s how obsessed they are with advancing the interests of their wealthy benefactors at the expense of the American people.

This administration has been notably weak-kneed when it comes to anything remotely controversial. They demonstrated this tendency to bail with Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, the Public Option in the health care debate, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and presently the matter of extending tax cuts to the wealthy. It seems that any opposition to common sense progressive proposals is met with complete surrender. We can’t let liars like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh drive the debate. And we can’t let the White House cave in to pressure from factions that represent greed and corporate power.

You can fight back by signing this petition from Bold Progressives to urge the FCC to protect free speech online by supporting Net Neutrality. And here’s another from Credo Action. Or you can use this form to contact the FCC directly and submit your comments. But you only have a couple of weeks, so act soon. You will surely regret it if you don’t and you later find that you can’t access some of your favorite web sites because they were blocked by ISPs because they couldn’t pay the toll.