31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981 Add this Digest to your personal   or   The Telecom Digest for May 24, 2013 Volume 32 : Issue 112 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Uncovering Apple's Tax Havens | On Point with Tom Ashbrook (Monty Solomon) Telco/cellco/data location and data mining (danny burstein) ====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 11:11:02 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Uncovering Apple's Tax Havens | On Point with Tom Ashbrook
Message-ID: <p0624084fcdc3e1813cdf@[10.0.1.2]>

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/05/22/apple-taxes

Uncovering Apple's Tax Havens
On Point with Tom Ashbrook
May 22, 2013

Apple in the hot seat.  Lawmakers say the company dodged billions in 
taxes on overseas profits.  We'll look at the world of offshore tax 
escapes.

The headlines looked pretty bad for Apple this week on taxes and 
offshore shelters.  "Gimmicks."  "Schemes."  Billions dodged. 
Stateless subsidiaries paying taxes nowhere, on giant revenues.

Then on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook in the hot seat in Washington, 
insisting that Apple is proud to be an American company, that it's 
broken no laws.  Reminding Congress of the billions it does pay in 
U.S. taxes.  Apple is not the only U.S. corporation working the edges 
of tax law in the global economy. It's a big deal.

Up next On Point:  Apple's taxes, American law and offshore escapes.

-- Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Jesse Drucker, investigative reporter for Bloomberg News and author 
of the journalism series "The Great Corporate Tax Dodge." 
(@JesseDrucker)

Kara Swisher, co-executive editor of the technology news website 
AllThingsD. (@karaswisher)

Edward Kleinbard, professor of law at the University of Southern 
California's School of Law. He served as Chief of Staff of the Joint 
Committee on Taxation.

Alan Auerbach, professor of economics and law at University of 
California Berkeley and director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy 
and Public Finance there. He also served as deputy Chief of Staff of 
the Joint Committee on Taxation.

***** Moderator's Note *****

So now the chickens come home to roost: having helped American
multi-nationals to put millions of americans out of work, having
looked the other way while corporate executives shopped for the right
jurisdictions to defend themselves against shareholder lawsuits, and
having ignored warnings from world-class economists about the
long-term effects of moving manufacturing, computer programming, and
design efforts to third-world countries, the Congress is now seeing
its own ox being gored. Our "public servants", who acted stupidly and
selfishly to line their own campaign coffers by allowing corporate
lobbyists to write the tax code, now have the gaul to act surprised
when the same lobbyists tell their customers they don't need to pay
Uncle Sam.

I'd say they brought it on themselves, but there is no "they": we
elected these avaricious, short-sited, simple fools, so the problem is
closer to home: in Pogo's immortal words, "We have met the enemy, and
he is us".

Bill Horne
Moderator



Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 21:26:56 -0400
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Telco/cellco/data location and data mining 
Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1305232126030.16851@panix5.panix.com>

Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers
by Anton Troianovski
The Wall Street Journal

Big phone companies have begun to sell the vast troves of data they
gather about their subscribers' locations, travels and Web-browsing
habits.

The information provides a powerful tool for marketers but raises new
privacy concerns. Even as Americans browsing the Internet grow more
accustomed to having every move tracked, combining that information
with a detailed accounting of their movements in the real world has
long been considered particularly sensitive.

The new offerings are also evidence of a shift in the relationship
between carriers and their subscribers. Instead of merely offering
customers a trusted conduit for communication, carriers are coming to
see subscribers as sources of data that can be mined for profit, a
practice more common among providers of free online services like
Google and Facebook.

When a Verizon Wireless customer navigates to a website on her
smartphone today, information about that website, her location and her
demographic background may end up as a data point in a product called
Precision Market Insights. The product, which Verizon launched in
October 2012 after trial runs, offers businesses like malls, stadiums
and billboard owners statistics about the activities and backgrounds
of cellphone users in particular locations.

Several European mobile-network operators have launched similar
efforts. This week, German software giant SAP AG is introducing a
service that will gather smartphone-use and location data from
wireless carriers and offer it to marketing firms.

Write to Anton Troianovski at anton.troianovski@wsj.com

rest at - 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/phone-firms-sell-data-customers-231300766.html

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
                   dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]





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