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The Telecom Digest for July 6, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 147 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 00:04:49 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: F.C.C. Is Told Verizon Underpaid Data Refunds
Message-ID: <p06240839cdfaa4c29b06@[10.0.1.12]>
F.C.C. Is Told Verizon Underpaid Data Refunds
By EDWARD WYATT
July 2, 2013
WASHINGTON - An independent telecommunications lawyer filed a
petition with the Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday,
claiming that Verizon Wireless had vastly understated the amount it
collected from false data charges on customer bills when it agreed to
refund the levies in 2010.
The lawyer, Arthur V. Belendiuk, of Washington, said in a petition
for investigation that Verizon and F.C.C. documents obtained through
a Freedom of Information request contained evidence indicating that
the company might have taken $240 million or more from the false
charges, more than four times the almost $53 million it agreed to
refund.
A Verizon spokesman, Torod B. Neptune, said that the allegations were
without merit, and declined to comment further. F.C.C. officials and
the Office of the Inspector General declined to comment.
The Verizon charges came to light in 2009 in articles in the
Cleveland Plain-Dealer and The New York Times.
Thousands of Verizon Wireless customers had been complaining about
mysterious $1.99 data charges on their cellphone bills. The customers
said they had not used the Internet connection function on their
phones; some demonstrated to Verizon employees that the charges had
occurred randomly, often when the phone was turned off or the battery
removed, and at times on accounts that did not have a phone capable
of connecting to the Internet.
The F.C.C.'s enforcement bureau investigated and in October 2010
reached a consent decree with Verizon. The company agreed to pay
$52.8 million in refunds to customers and a payment of $25 million to
the United States Treasury to end the investigation. At the time, it
was the largest such payment in F.C.C. history, the agency said.
The F.C.C. found that about 15 million pay-as-you-go customers could
have been affected by the false charges over a period of about 30
months.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/business/fcc-is-told-verizon-underpaid-data-refunds.html
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2013 00:05:43 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: 140 Characters Spell Charges and Jail
Message-ID: <p0624083acdfaa4f7a75b@[10.0.1.12]>
140 Characters Spell Charges and Jail
By ROBBIE BROWN
July 2, 2013
One night last summer, Jarvis Britton of Birmingham, Ala., sent out a
series of Twitter messages that he later described as "stupid" jokes.
Prosecutors did not think they were funny.
"Let's Go Kill the President," wrote Mr. Britton, who is 26 and
unemployed. "I think we could get the president with cyanide!
#MakeItSlow."
When Secret Service agents showed up at his house to question him,
Mr. Britton said he had been drunk and apologized. But in September,
he posted another round of death threats against President Obama and
was arrested. Last month, he was sentenced to a year in federal
prison.
"Because of the repeated threats on Twitter, we took him seriously,"
said Joyce White Vance, the United States attorney for the Northern
District of Alabama, who prosecuted the case.
Mr. Britton was the latest in a recent series of social media users
to overstep the boundary of legal free speech and face jail time for
threatening the president's life. Last month, a Twitter user in
Charlotte, N.C., Donte Jamar Sims, was sentenced to six months for
posting "Ima assassinate president Obama this evening!" among other
threats. And Daniel Temple of Columbus, Ohio, is awaiting sentencing
for saying on Twitter that he was "coming to kill" the president and
"killing you soon."
A Secret Service spokesman, Brian Leary, said social media are
increasingly useful for finding and tracking threats. In 2011, the
agency created the @SecretService account, to let users report
suspicious tweets. And a group of agents, called the Internet Threat
Desk, focuses specifically on threats posted online.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/03/us/felony-counts-and-jail-in-140-characters.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
This makes me very uncomfortable. There is a very fine line between
"I'm going to kill Obama" and "I'm going to kill Obama at the polls",
and Uncle Sam has shown that he is sometimes unable to discern just
where that line is.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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