Sprint fined $16m for sticking it to The Man: Telco 'overcharged' Feds for phone wiretaps Sprint has agreed to pay a $15.5m fine after it was accused of overcharging the Feds when carrying out court-ordered wiretaps. The US Department of Justice (DoJ) claimed the American telco had gouged cops and g-men between 2007 and 2010: Sprint allegedly over-billed them by at least $21m for setting up wiretaps to record phone …
So they got in trouble for trying to pay for unnecessary hardware that the government forced upon them? I would hardly call that 'gouging' or 'over-charging', they were just lucky that that was all that Sprint charged them for the wiretaps I would've charged them a service charge. As a Sprint customer, I am quite livid that the cost of spying on citizens is being pushed onto those same citizens. It'd be like getting arrested but the police car pulls in a gas station on the way to the jail and forces you to buy them a tank.
Given that these are very specialized pieces of equipment mandated by the government, they probably cost more than the GDP of most nations...
> ...I am quite livid that the cost of spying on citizens is being pushed onto those same citizens.
I don't think you quite understand how the money flows in these cases.
First, a decision is made that govt. phone tapping is desirable for catching bad guys. Debatable, but there it is.
Then it has to be paid for. The cost could come directly out of tax monies, but that would slightly reduce spending for other stuff that the authorities would like to purchase, so they instead cleverly made the telcos do it, and fold the cost invisibly into their customer billing totals.
It amounts to a new hidden tax, without any government fingerprints on it.
Since all telcos had to do this, it was deemed 'fair,' but this particular telco apparently wanted to pass the cost back to the Feds. The Fed don't let others play that game, that's their private turf. Hence the prosecution.
"I don't think you quite understand how the money flows in these cases."
But I do understand that I'm paying extra money for my service to be spied upon. I prefer it to come from the government since that would require someone to approve it rather than a secret letter being sent to a company telling them that must do this and keep their mouths shut about it. This flies in the face of the idea that the Government is accountable to the people. But I suppose they do this so people don't know how much money is being wasted on violating our civil liberties and if people knew, there'd be an armed rebellion...
One thing that has bothered me about all this spying stuff is that no one has ever released any numbers about useful these spying programs have been in catching terrorists. Not even something saying "Wiretapping allowed us to catch and prosecute 'x' terrorists that we have shown were plotting on committing an act of terrorism". The deafening silence tells me that the answer is a big fat zero, since publishing these numbers would only help their position.
> ...no one has ever released any numbers about useful these spying programs have been in catching terrorists.
I've seen a couple of reports. If the tap is targeted at a known bad guy, the return is not too bad, but for general surveilance it amounts to 1 terrorist caught in 10 years, or something along those lines. I'm not clear on the details, but that was the gist of it. I figure that's about right or we would be constantly hearing statistics about the success of the spying programs. Instead we get vague hand-waving about how "important" the spying is for keeping us "safe."
Charging customers to be able to spy on them is similar to "Here's a fiver.. beat me to a bloody pulp" and not being one of those who enjoys such things.
But... we get double charged...maybe triple charged. Not only by our tax dollars going to the agencies but also we get hit by the telcos to suppor this. So maybe it's: "Here's a fiver... beat me to a bloody pulp and while you're at it, here's another spot of change to pay the audience."...
So they got in trouble for trying to pay for unnecessary hardware that the government forced upon them? I would hardly call that 'gouging' or 'over-charging', they were just lucky that that was all that Sprint charged them for the wiretaps I would've charged them a service charge.
Actually, you should have been more worried if they did not (although I suspect they were trying to have it both ways). At the moment, you use a network for which you didn't pay for the kit either - that is recouped out of the service charges.
Sprint trying to recoup could mean they don't see much of a return in the way of charges (read: low use). Personally, I think that's overly pessimistic, so I'll stick with the idea that they tried to double dip - after all, that's apparently what a barrel of pork is for.
They could have been smart about this and call the kit "airport scanner" - nobody asks questions about waste then.
Given that these are very specialized pieces of equipment mandated by the government, they probably cost more than the GDP of most nations...
Actually, no. AFAIK it's close to $1M for a unit depending on capabilities, plus storage costs. You'd need a couple of those to ensure full coverage and resilience. This price may be out of date - it's been a while since I looked last.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/05/obama_criticises_china_tech_rules_backdoor_terrorism/
The proposed laws "would essentially force all foreign companies, including US companies, to turn over to the Chinese government mechanisms where they can snoop and keep track of all the users of those services," Obama added.
"As you might imagine, tech companies are not going to be willing to do that," he said.
It's sort of funny that the US is seeking to ban what it does itself - repeatedly.
Ignoring patent law - well, that's how the US actually got started, but they don't want you to mention that, and CERTAINLY not use the same ide
Mandatory backdoors - oh dear, where do I begin? With Clipper, maybe?
Do not unto others what might piss you off when done to you, to paraphrase something vaguely remembered...
"It's sort of funny that the US is seeking to ban what it does itself - repeatedly."
Yup, the US main two political parties, and officials in power, are incredibly hypocritical in this regard. You should see them bleat on about how horrible it is about China wanting to spy on it's citizens and so on, then there's just awkward silence when the subject turns to what they are going to do about the US's illegal spying program spying on US citizens. These guys have some kind of blinders, thinking that if they don't mention the US spying programs that they'll just go away.
Re: Sprint... heh. Sprint having billing problems? I can't believe it...hehehe. (For you across the pond, it's like a running joke with Sprint, like... boy I sure did get a good deal, I hope I don't run into billing problems.) Good on them for trying to recoup costs though, if the Feds want specialized equipment they should damn well have to pay for it.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
