Whistleblower Says AT&T Has Been Ripping Off US Schools For A Decade [telecom]

from the a-pattern-develops dept

By Karl Bode

In just the last five years or so AT&T has been: fined $18.6 million for helping rip off programs for the hearing impaired; fined $10.4 million for ripping off a program for low-income families; fined $105 million for helping "crammers" by intentionally making such bogus charges more difficult to see on customer bills; and fined $60 million for lying to customers about the definition of "unlimited" data. This is just a few of AT&T's adventures in regulatory oversight, and in most instances AT&T lawyers are usually able to lower the fines, or eliminate them entirely, after years of litigation.

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I used to wonder why Blue Boxes(1) were in use for so long: mostly, from about 1960 to the early 1980's. It occurred to me one day that there was a simple explanation: there was no effective action taken against phreakers for the simple reason that MA BELL(2) WAS GETTING PAID.

Blue boxes worked by diverting a call that had been made (in most cases) to an 800 number, and sending it to a different destination: but after the call had been rerouted, and the new destination answered it, the billing office would mark the call as "completed" - and the owner of the 800 number would be billed for it. That meant that Blue Box use served to generate more revenue, so Ma Bell had little motivation to take any serious action against the phreakers. It also meant that Blue Box use was never a victimless crime, as some have claimed.

As we used to say in the Military Police: "Follow the Money!" It always boils down to the questions "Who paid?" and "Who got paid?" - and in the cases that Mr. Bode cites, the answer to the first question was "Us!"

Tax dollars paid for the programs to aid hering-impaired users and the elderly, and most cramming fraud was directed at unsophisticated home users and small businesses that couldn't afford detailed billing analysis. The bait-and-switch claims of "unlimited" data were directed at the same small businesses and home users.

Time and time again, I am reminded of Juvenal's prescient question: "Who will watch the Watchmen?" In Mother Bell's case, the answer was "Nobody."

Bill

  1. See
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  2. Since the original company named "AT&T" is not the same as the one Mr. Bode wrote about, I use the name "Mother Bell" to apply to all similar entities, past and present.
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Bill Horne

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