Not a peep for the FCC head talkin....

FCC's Martin Mum on Net Neutrality
By David Kravets EmailMarch 07, 2008 | 2:54:45 PMCategories: Network Neutrality

Netneutrality_2

Declaring the internet a "tool for democracy," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Friday the "commission is ready, willing and able to take action" on "net neutrality" complaints.

Martin noted that "applications are being singled out" and traffic management has been "arbitrary to specific applications." But he didn't go so far as to say whether ISPs had a right to target BitTorrent or other data.

"I think that will also trigger heightened scrutiny by the commission," he said.

Speaking at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, Martin said the commission is likely to resolve the heated dispute about Comcast blocking and or delaying BitTorrent traffic and set net neutrality standards sometime in the second quarter of this year. BitTorrent, while used for legitimate reasons, is among the protocols of choice for pilfering copyrighted works on the internet.

During his 30-minute speech in Palo Alto, California, Martin referred to the concept of "reasonable network management," an FCC policy granting internet service providers a license to manage traffic on their pipes.

He noted that no decision has been made, yet he provided some hints. While calling it "troubling" that Comcast initially denied it was interrupting BitTorrent traffic, Martin suggested that internet service providers should disclose upfront to consumers that data may be blocked or delayed.

Comcast says that it doesn't block BitTorrent, or any kind of traffic. Instead, Comcast maintains it delays traffic at peak times to manage congestion.

In September, the Bush administration urged the commission not to enact new rules to prevent telecommunications providers from discriminating against certain kinds of Internet traffic.

"There are benefits to treating certain content differently," the administration wrote. "A number of companies offer services to provide faster delivery of content and/or to avoid some of the congestion and delay on the public Internet. Owners of network facilities have legitimate reasons to manage facilities in ways that lessen congestion and address public safety issues."

Don't forget: President Bush appointed Martin.

Is anyone really suprised at this point in time

Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier -- Congress Reacts
By Kevin Poulsen EmailMarch 06, 2008 | 8:15:00 PMCategories: Spooks Gone Wild

Quantico A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

"What I thought was alarming is how this carrier ended up essentially allowing a third party outside their organization to have unfettered access to their environment," Babak Pasdar, now CEO of New York-based Bat Blue told THREAT LEVEL. "I wanted to put some access controls around it; they vehemently denied it. And when I wanted to put some logging around it, they denied that."

Pasdar won't name the wireless carrier in question, but his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006 against four phone companies and the U.S. government for alleged privacy violations. That suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

Pasdar has executed a seven-page affidavit for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project in Washington, which on Tuesday began circulating the document (.pdf), along with talking points (.doc), to congressional staffers hashing out a Republican proposal to grant retroactive legal immunity to phone companies who cooperated in the warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a "Rapid Deployment" team hired to revamp security on the carrier's internal network. He noticed that the carrier's officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" -- a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party.

Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it's also the center of the FBI's electronic surveillance operations.

"The circuit was tied to the organization's core network," Pasdar writes in his affidavit. "It had access to the billing system, text messaging, fraud detection, web site, and pretty much all the systems in the data center without apparent restrictions."

The 2006 lawsuit (.pdf), which is suspended pending an appeals court ruling, describes a similar arrangement, naming Verizon.

Who do our Representatives work for US or the Corporations

This Thursday, the House of Representatives is expected to hand phone companies a get-out-of-jail-free card for illegally turning over your private phone records to the government. I don’t have to tell you how wrong this is.

We have 48 hours to stop them. Tell Rep. Chris Van Hollen that you oppose any effort to cover-up illegal spying on Americans. We will deliver the letter before Thursday's vote.

Tell Rep. Chris Van Hollen: No Cover Up

This is vital to protecting your basic right to make a phone call, send an e-mail or search the Internet without the government monitoring your activity.

After intense lobbying by AT&T, Verizon and the Bush White House, the Senate has already signed off on immunity for these companies. If the House passes the FISA bill this week, more than 40 legitimate lawsuits currently pending against phone companies will disappear before they've begun.

Americans have had their rights violated, and now Congress may pass a bill that gives us no legal remedy. When you are accused of breaking the law, you should have your day in court. Neither the phone companies nor this White House is above the law

Remember how your representatives vote on this it is the difference between US and the large companies......

You can send a letter via FreePress campaign....


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