Guardian Unlimited
The EU's highest court today ruled that it was unlawful to order European airlines to hand over information about transatlantic air passengers to the US government.The European court of justice ruling said the US did not provide adequate protection for air passengers' privacy.
Under the Passenger Name Records agreement, reached in May 2004, EU airlines have been obliged to give Washington 34 items of information about passengers flying to the US. The details include names, addresses, all forms of payment and contact telephone numbers.
The ruling, which gives the European commission and member states four months to find a solution, maintains the legality of the agreement until September 30 "for reasons of legal certainty".
The court ruled that the decision by the council of ministers - the decision-making body that represents national governments - to sign the agreement had lacked an adequate legal basis.
"Consequently, the court annulled the council decision approving the conclusion of the agreement and did not consider it necessary to consider the other pleas relied on by parliament," a court statement said.
The US and European airlines said the ruling would have no immediate impact on transatlantic air travel and left time to find an agreed solution to the data transfer issue.
US and commission officials said they were confident a fresh agreement could be reached. Stewart Baker, the assistant secretary of state for the Department of Homeland Security, said he expected "a solution that will keep the data flowing and the planes flying".
Franco Frattini, the commissioner with responsibility for security, said the US and EU needed "continuity".
European airlines played down the impact of the ruling, saying there should be no short-term effect on travellers.
US officials insisted that the transfer of personal details was essential in the fight against terror following September 11.
They had warned that failure to agree a deal on passenger data would mean prolonged delays for air passengers from Europe because more processing would be required on their arrival in the US.
The judges today said the agreement had to be annulled because existing EU data protection law only covers commercial data and not that used for security purposes.
Graham Watson, the Liberal Democrat leader in the European parliament, led the campaign against the legislation and welcomed the result.
"Today's judgment vindicates the four-year campaign that I and my colleagues led in the European parliament to protect the privacy of airline passengers," he said.
Stewart Room, the head of data protection at Rowe Cohen solicitors, said there was no authority within EU law for the original deal.
"The starting point is that the European directive on data protection does not extend to matters of public security," he said.
"Consequently, it is unlawful for the commission, or anyone else in the EU, to make the passenger records available to a government under that directive. It had to fail because the commission does not have the legal authority."
Mr Room said bilateral agreements between European governments and the US could be one way to circumnavigate the EU rules - something the Liberal Democrat MEP Sarah Ludford said MEPs would be alert to.
However, he questioned whether the data would be useful and whether there was still the political will to push through more information collection projects.
"Law and order agencies are sucking in more data than they can process," he said. "There may be some quality data within the information, but you end up in a situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees.
"There has to be a real question as to whether the government still has the will to carry this forward in the light of the controversy over other massive data collection projects, such as the introduction of identity cards."
The deal on "processing and transfer of personal data" on transatlantic flights was backed by EU governments and the European commission.
It meant complying with US anti-terrorist legislation requiring that all airlines operating flights to, from or across US territory provide the authorities with electronic access to all passenger data in their reservation and departure control systems.
The verdict could pose a major problem for individual European airlines. They may face the threat of sanctions from Washington if they refuse to cooperate with the US electronic passenger information requirements, or sanctions from their national data protection authorities if they do.
Opponents of Internet freedom seem shocked that Google, MoveOn, the Christian Coalition, and 700 other diverse organizations are fighting on the same side to preserve the Internet that has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation, and free speech.
Telecom companies and their multi-million dollar lobbyists are so befuddled that their plan to put tollbooths on the Internet is losing support that they've taken to spreading absurd rumors.
Internet freedom opponents told one right-wing tabloid that "Google has become the single largest private corporate underwriter of MoveOn." That's news to us since MoveOn has never received a cent from Google - or any other big business. We're funded by the small dollar contributions of 3.3 million members.
Equally absurd, "sources" told the tabloid that "Some of that money has gone to an online petition drive and a letter-writing campaign." That may be AT&T's fantasy world - but right now, online activities that allow regular citizens to be participants in their democracy cost advocacy groups almost nothing. And that's a good thing.
Rounding out a trifecta of errors, the tabloid says MoveOn is funneling Google "Net Neutrality money" into a Senate race in Pennsylvania. That rumor isn't just paranoid - it doesn't even point at the right organization. MoveOn.org Civic Action, which is pushing Net Neutrality, is a separate organization from MoveOn.org Political Action, which does more political work
Unfortunately, these aren't the most egregious rumors going around.
Internet freedom opponents also try to fool Congress and the public with rumors that Net Neutrality means "regulating the Internet." They know full well that Net Neutrality has been in place since the Internet began, but the FCC recently put it on the path to elimination unless Congress steps in and pro-actively keeps the rules the same.
Telecom companies also like to paper Congress with propaganda implying that Internet freedom is somehow a left-wing issue. Tell that to the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Instapundit, the business executives, and the many libertarians who are fighting right along with MoveOn, the inventors of the Internet, thousands of bloggers, and the SavetheInternet.com Coalition in support of Net Neutrality.
As Craig Fields of the Gun Owners says, when the left and right agree on an issue like Internet freedom, "it's been my experience that what Congress is getting ready to do is basically un-American." On the proposal to destroy Net Neutrality, most Americans would probably agree.
Battle Cry for Theocracy!
By SUNSARA TAYLOR
If you've been waiting until the Christian fascist movement started filling stadiums with young people and hyping them up to do battle in "God's army" to get alarmed, wait no longer.
In recent weeks, Battle Cry, a Christian fundamentalist youth movement, has attracted more than 25,000 to mega-rally rock concerts in San Francisco and Detroit and this weekend they plan to fill Wachovia Stadium in Philadelphia.
They claim their religion and values are under attack but, amidst spectacular lightshows, hummers, Navy Seals, and military imagery on stage, it is Battle Cry that has declared war on everyone else! Their leader, Ron Luce, insists: "This is war. And Jesus invites us to get into the action, telling us that the violent--the 'forceful' ones--will lay hold of the kingdom."
A glimpse at Battle Cry's Honor Academy, which trains 500 youth each year and preaches that homosexuality and masturbation are sins, reveals a lot about what kind of society they are fighting for. Interns are forbidden to listen to secular music, watch R-rated movies or date. Men can't use the internet unsupervised and the length of women's skirts is regulated. The logic behind this, that men must be protected from the sin of sexual temptation, is what drives Islamic fundamentalists to shroud women in burkhas!
Behind their multi-million dollar operation that sends more than 5,000 missionaries to more than thirty-four countries each year, are some of the most powerful and extreme religious lunatics in the country. Their partners include Pat Robertson (who got a call from Karl Rove to discuss Alito before the nomination was made public), Ted Haggard (who brags that his concerns will be responded to by the White House within 24 hours), Jerry Falwell (who blamed September 11th on homosexuals, feminists, pagans, and abortionists), and others. Their events have been addressed by Barbara Bush (via video) as well as former President Gerry Ford. This weekend's event will include Franklyn Graham who has ministered to George Bush and publicly proclaimed that Islam is an "evil religion."
What most of these figures have in common is their insistence that the Bible be read literally and obeyed as the inerrant word of God. And, as Ron Luce leads youth to pray, "I will keep my eyes on the battle, submitting to Your code even when I don't understand.outside my comfort zone in the battle zone," it would be foolish to expect that there is any part of the Bible's literal horrors this movement would be unwilling to enforce. That includes stoning disobedient children and non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 21:18-21 and 22:13-21), executing gays (Leviticus 20:13), and keeping slaves (Peter 2:18).
Already they staged a protest on the steps of San Francisco's City Hall precisely because they were "the very city hall steps where several months ago 'gay marriages' were celebrated." Their answer to the scourge of rape and violence against women is to end divorce, spread ignorance, insist on virginity--the very things that will more entrap women in these nightmares. And this Friday, they are planning rallies at fifty City Halls nation-wide.
Of course, like the President who gave Ron Luce an appointment to the White House Advisory Commission on Drug-Free Communities, Battle Cry tells its share of bald-faced lies. For one, they claim that "a society fortified by biblical principals and a strong moral code...is the heritage our forefathers fought and died to secure for us." But the word "God" never appears in the Constitution. After three-and-a-half months of debate about what should go into the document that would govern the land, the framers drafted a constitution that is secular.
Battle Cry also claims America has been "set aside for God's purposes--a country established for good and fruitfully blessed so that we might take God's message to the ends of the earth." It is revealing that for all their talk about the value of life and the evils of violent imagery, Battle Cry never speaks against the real violence and loss of life being inflicted by U.S. troops in Iraq.
Still, there is one thing that Battle Cry gets right: this country is in the midst of a deep moral crisis. We are indeed living through times when business-as-usual is unconscionable.
As the Bush regime wages unjust wars and conducts torture in our names, as they leave New Orleans to rot, and drag us closer each day to a theocracy where abortion and birth control are banned, science is pulled under, and gays are persecuted, it is no wonder that young people are searching for meaning and morality.
The truth is, however, youth will not find the morality they need in a stadium listening to Ron Luce preach about religious war and intolerance. And they won't find it while buying Battle Cry's keepsake dog-tags.
These young people need to be challenged to look around them and think for themselves.
I am confident that if they do, many of them may find that the truly moral way to live is to throw their tremendous energies and dreams of a better world into stopping this madness and driving out the Bush regime.
This generation--and their counterparts all around the world--will have to live with the consequences of this culture war, one way or another.
In the Atlanta suburbs of DeKalb County, local officials wasted no time after the 9/11 attacks. The second-most-populous county in Georgia, the area is home to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI's regional headquarters, and other potential terrorist targets. Within weeks of the attacks, officials there boasted that they had set up the nation's first local department of homeland security. Dozens of other communities followed, and, like them, DeKalb County put in for--and got--a series of generous federal counterterrorism grants. The county received nearly $12 million from Washington, using it to set up, among other things, a police intelligence unit.
The outfit stumbled in 2002, when two of its agents were assigned to follow around the county executive. Their job: to determine whether he was being tailed--not by al Qaeda but by a district attorney investigator looking into alleged misspending. A year later, one of its plainclothes agents was seen photographing a handful of vegan activists handing out antimeat leaflets in front of a HoneyBaked Ham store. Police arrested two of the vegans and demanded that they turn over notes, on which they'd written the license-plate number of an undercover car, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is now suing the county. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial neatly summed up the incident: "So now we know: Glazed hams are safe in DeKalb County."
Glazed hams aren't the only items that America's local cops are protecting from dubious threats. U.S. News has identified nearly a dozen cases in which city and county police, in the name of homeland security, have surveilled or harassed animal-rights and antiwar protesters, union activists, and even library patrons surfing the Web. Unlike with Washington's warrantless domestic surveillance program, little attention has been focused on the role of state and local authorities in the war on terrorism. A U.S.News inquiry found that federal officials have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into once discredited state and local police intelligence operations. Millions more have gone into building up regional law enforcement databases to unprecedented levels. In dozens of interviews, officials across the nation have stressed that the enhanced intelligence work is vital to the nation's security, but even its biggest boosters worry about a lack of training and standards. "This is going to be the challenge," says Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton, "to ensure that while getting bin Laden we don't transgress over the law. We've been burned so badly in the past--we can't do that again."
Rap sheets. Chief Bratton is referring to the infamous city "Red Squads" that targeted civil rights and antiwar groups in the 1960s and 1970s (Page 48). Veteran police officers say no one in law enforcement wants a return to the bad old days of domestic spying. But civil liberties watchdogs warn that with so many cops looking for terrorists, real and imagined, abuses may be inevitable. "The restrictions on police spying are being removed," says attorney Richard Gutman, who led a 1974 class action lawsuit against the Chicago police that obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of intelligence files. "And I don't think you can rely on the police to regulate themselves."
Small knives, nail clippers, scissors, lighters, training weights and a car steering lock - the haul so far is fairly typical.
Most look pretty harmless, but the trained staff of the Transportation Security Administration have to consider their potential in the hands of a man or woman with hostile intent.
Douglas Hofsass, Federal Security Director at LaGuardia, explains: "A traditional tool like a Leatherman has a legitimate use as a multi-purpose tool, but it also has a significant blade inside so what we're looking for is its capability if someone had an intent to use it for another purpose".
Every week, they collect around 7,000 items here.
| | We call it the general fund, and all agencies can share in the use of that revenue or we return it to the taxpayers Ken Hess, director, Bureau of Supplies and Surplus Operations in Pennsylvania |
In a side office nearby Mr Hofsass shows me the "wall of shame", a collage of confiscated goods that have shocked even the seasoned security men that have spent years here.
There is a couple of hand grenades, a machete, whips, and vicious-looking blades, all discovered in the hand luggage which certain passengers had hoped to take on a plane.
These shocking items will stay here to help train the staff, but the rest is handed over the Bureau of Supplies and Surplus Operations in Pennsylvania.
Personal items
The Bureau's headquarters is a dusty, dim-lit building in the state capital of Harrisburg.
Ten tonnes of material arrives here every month, in cardboard boxes and plastic bins.
They are separated by brand and by category so that they can be sold en masse in an internet auction.
Some are harder to sell than others.
There's a curious surplus of handcuffs, some covered in silk, lace or leopard skin, a reminder that some very personal items have been surrendered.
Susan Nelson, shifting through some scissors, admits she often feels guilty about the trade:
"A couple of times I have found bride and groom cake-cutting set. A lot of times it has their names on it as well as the wedding dates and it is really sad for them because its clearly a memento or something that maybe somebody flew on the plane to the wedding wanted to give them as a gift, and that's really a shame."
General fund
Ken Hess, director of the Bureau, is keen to stress that these items are "voluntarily surrendered" rather than confiscated.
In other words, anyone with a deep attachment to an item could have turned around at security - got back into the airport, re-packed them for the hold, or dropped them in the post to their home.
Realistically, that is pretty rare because the delay would make the passenger in question miss their flight.
But Mr Hess is not really worried.
This, for him, has become big business.
"Usually between $15,000 (£8,000) and $20,000 a month in revenue, so far we've made $274,000 in total."
That is pretty good, considering the scheme was only put in place last autumn.
And the money goes to the state of Pennsylvania.
"We call it the general fund, and all agencies can share in the use of that revenue or we return it to the taxpayers," says Mr Hess.
The rules put in place after the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers have been relaxed a little lately.
Cuticle cutters for instance can now survive security screening, and that has reduced the supply of goods to the Harrisburg warehouse.
But the only thing that would really harm this business badly is if the rest of us pack our bags properly and put prohibited items in the hold of the plane, or leave it at home.
Urges the General Assembly to submit charges to the U. S. House of Representatives to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the United States, George W. Bush, for willfully violating his Oath of Office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and if found guilty urges his removal from office and disqualification to hold any other office in the United States.
By Richard Reeves
SAG HARBOR, N.Y. -- On Saturday mornings in the summer, the post office here is sometimes crowded with farm workers, construction workers, busboys and nannies speaking Spanish and a couple of other languages to each other. That's the day they buy money orders to send cash back home to Mexico or
El Salvador, the Philippines, even to Pakistan. One of the newer businesses in the village, in fact, is a small storefront that advertises in Spanish and sends small amounts of money around the world.
Those workers and others like them, legal or illegal, are distributing a lot more foreign aid from the United States than the government ever does. And since the money -- "remittances," to be more precise -- goes directly to their families, it may do more good than money and credits that pass through the larcenous hands of some foreign governments.
There are arguments about how big the remittance economy, or economies, really is. But there is no argument about this: The amount of remittances is increasing year by year, and it is an important if relatively quiet part of the debates about immigration and globalization.
The statistics of remittances are obviously fuzzy math because the money being made in the fields of California or the kitchens of Long Island goes around both banks and the bean-counters of governments.
But here are some estimates:This is how it works, according to Geri Smith of that magazine, who chronicled the life of a young Mexican husband and wife who left $4.25-an-hour work in the fields of California to work in a pork-packaging plant in Iowa: "They each earn $12 an hour now, and after income taxes and Social Security are withheld -- yes, they do pay U.S. taxes -- they clear about $3,500 a month. That's nearly 10 times what they could earn in Mexico, and it's enough to buy a used two-bedroom trailer and a 1998 pickup truck to cart their two preschool children around town. Once a month, he wires $250 to his 50-year-old mother in Mexico City."
A former Washington Post reporter, Robert Suro, added this in a foundation-funded study a few years ago: "During the course of the summer in Los Angeles, Esteban did everything, including painting, landscaping, loading and unloading trucks at garment district warehouses. The pay was always close to the minimum wage and always in cash. Esteban figured that he wired home (to Mexico) between $150 and $250 a week. Housing was a blanket on the floor of a church-run shelter. All his belongings fit into a small gym bag. 'On Saturday,' he said, 'I send back whatever I have and keep $5 for myself.'"Officials of the IMF and many government economists argue that private consumption is less efficient than planned development. Maybe, but private consumption is the American way, and is also a way to make America more secure. Without remittances, the world, and particularly North America, would be a more dangerous place. It is not in the interest of a rich country such as the United States to have even more poor and desperate people living just across its southern border. Legal or illegal, those remittances make Mexico and Central America more stable and the United States more safe.
This great opportunity is available to:
Inspector - Supervises polling place operations; attends training class; picks up supplies; sets up/takes down polling place; delivers all supplies to an assigned Return Center.
Judge - Attends training class, assists Inspector with duties; may accompany Inspector to Return Center.
Clerk - Attends training class, assists Inspector with duties; may accompany Inspector to Return Center.
To become a poll worker, simply fill out an application.
To apply online, click the following link: Online Application Form
To apply by mail, download the Mail-in Application Form** and send the completed application to:
Registrar of VotersRecruiting Section
1225 Fallon St. Room G-1
Oakland, CA 94612
**Requires free Adobe Acrobat Reader.
ATTENTION HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS: California law allows high school seniors to work as election officers on election day. You must be at least 16 years of age, a United States citizen, and a student in good standing with your school earning at least a 2.5 grade point average on a scale of 4.0. If you are interested in working at the polls in an election and please call 510-272-6971 for more information or send in an application.
| $5 a gallon! |
| As oil soars toward $100 a barrel, it's likely, experts say |
| |
| That could translate into gas prices of more than $5 a gallon at the pump and spike home heating oil an additional 30%, analysts said. Iran's deputy oil minister, Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, fueled the paranoia yesterday by predicting that crude could hit $100 a barrel by the end of the year - $26 above even yesterday's near-record price. The problem is that Iran, the world's fourth-largest producer of crude, is just one of several hot spots in danger of boiling over, experts said. "There's so much that could go wrong right now," said Phil Flynn, an energy analyst at Alaron Trading in Chicago. "This is the scariest time we've seen in oil in a long period of time." In addition to the looming showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, terrorists have repeatedly threatened to attack oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia; Nigerian rebels have disrupted exports by 25%; Iraq is pumping out 30% less crude than it did before the war; production in the Gulf of Mexico has yet to return to normal after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and Bolivian President Evo Morales yesterday seized control of the country's oil and gas fields and gave foreign companies 180 days to agree to new deals with the government. "We're on a hair trigger," said John Kilduff, senior vice president of energy risk management at Fimat USA, a New York commodities trading firm. "Unfortunately for consumers, we're on the brink of [$100 a barrel] as we speak," he said. "It's been a parade of horribles." U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said the market is worried about a supply disruption, and "there's no doubt a [fear] premium" is reflected in today's prices. Crude prices also are being pushed north by soaring demand from developing countries such as China and India, coupled with a razor-thin surplus capacity among exporters. Bodman said high gasoline prices are a "crisis" for Americans. "It is a crisis in the sense of the individual," Bodman said after a meeting with the Saudi oil minister. If crude hits $100 a barrel, gas prices could easily top $5 a gallon here and home heating oil could jump an additional 30%, Kilduff said. "That would be quite painful," he added. |
Today, May 3, is the National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. Show Senator Frist that Americans are interested in real results that are possible through the Menendez bill, not the irresponsible rhetoric of the extreme right. Call Senator Frist at 202-224-3344 and urge him to support this measure to reduce teen pregnancy -- then, tell us how it went.
Thank you for all you do to protect a woman's right to choose.
Sincerely,
Kristin Koch
Assistant Director of Communications -- Online Advocacy
Lawmakers in Congress are scheduled to vote today on a landmark bill that consumer advocates and some of the biggest names in the tech world say would change the Internet as we know it, creating fast lanes and slow lanes for Web access.
The issue of so-called net neutrality, as in network neutrality, is at the heart of legislation that represents the most sweeping overhaul of telecom law since the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
The question is whether network providers like AT&T and Verizon should have the ability to charge some Web sites fees for faster access speeds -- and whether such a two-tier system inherently discriminates against any site that doesn't pony up extra cash.
It also has broader ramifications as the phone companies prepare to flood existing bandwidth with their own video services, potentially creating bottlenecks for other online content.
"The Internet could be fundamentally altered by this," said Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., one of Congress' leading authorities on telecom issues and a ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's telecom subcommittee.
"The more people learn about this, the more they'll understand we're heading toward a system of informational apartheid," he told me.
Markey said Republican backers of the legislation -- titled the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006 -- are expected to prevail in today's subcommittee vote.
A vote by the full House is possible by June, and the Senate is likely to take up the matter shortly thereafter. The bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee, has said he expects President Bush to sign it into law by the end of the year.
There are other components to the bill. One would allow phone companies to bypass municipal approvals when rolling out video services (an exemption not offered cable providers). Another would allow cities to develop local wireless networks without first getting the OK from state officials.
But it's net neutrality that could end up having the most profound impact on the millions of people for whom the Internet has become a core part of their daily lives.
"The Internet has always been open and operated on a best-effort basis," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington digital-rights group. "That means no one's messing with all the bits. Everyone's bits get the same treatment.
"When the broadband provider inserts himself in the middle of this system, which is what this bill would allow, the provider becomes Internet God. He can determine which bits get priority and which ones don't."
It's not as though an entirely new (and faster) network will be built for well-heeled Web sites. Rather, the existing network will remain, but telecom providers will have the ability to determine which transmissions get where they're going more quickly and securely.
Seeking higher prices
The phone companies argue that they need to charge higher prices to companies that require more-reliable networks, or that are transferring unusually large files to customers, such as online movies.
"Our industry has stated that it will not block, impair or degrade consumer access to the Internet," Walter McCormick, head of the U.S. Telecom Association, testified before lawmakers last week.
Here's the problem: Let's say Amazon.com pays extra fees to have its site load faster on people's browsers. And let's say a smaller online bookstore can't afford the fees and thus its site loads more slowly.
Assuming book prices at both sites are comparable, which one will get more business over the long haul? Most likely, the one with better performance -- in this case, Amazon. The smaller upstart can't compete.
By the same token, would Google ever have caught on if it operated noticeably slower than other search engines? Would the next Google-to-be now being developed by some college student even have a shot if it can't afford toll charges for the Net's fast lane?
Warning about Internet
Last month, a consortium of some of the biggest names in the tech business submitted a letter to the Energy and Commerce Committee warning that "the Internet is at risk of losing the openness that has made it an engine for phenomenal social and economic growth."
"Consumers in the marketplace, and not network operators, should decide what content and services succeed or fail," the letter said, adding that this "must be guaranteed by a meaningful and enforceable net neutrality requirement."
Companies submitting the letter included Amazon, eBay, Google, Microsoft, TiVo, Yahoo and dozens of other top tech outfits.
The legislation now before lawmakers has been stripped of more- stringent requirements submitted by Democratic politicians. The bill would allow the Federal Communications Commission to decide disputes about Web access only on a case-by-case basis, not as a matter of broad policy.
It would also prohibit the FCC from writing any new net-neutrality rules in the future.
Markey said the final draft of the bill is the result of aggressive lobbying by phone companies.
"This bill is of, for and by the Bells," he said. "It basically gives AT&T and Verizon everything they want."
The phone companies have responded to such criticism by repeatedly insisting that they have no intention of blocking access to any Web sites or worsening anyone's performance.
"AT&T will not block access to the public Internet or degrade service, period," Ed Whitacre, the company's chairman, told an industry conference in Las Vegas last week.
But he and other telecom execs also maintain that they see nothing wrong with some content providers paying a premium for reliable service -- and, by inference, for everyone else to accept less-than-optimal network reliability.
"If someone wants to transmit a high-quality service with no interruptions and 'guaranteed this, guaranteed that,' they should be willing to pay for that," Whitacre told an interviewer in January.
Google called freeloader
A few days later, a top Verizon exec said content providers like Google are freeloading off the phone companies' networks.
"The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers," John Thorne, a Verizon senior vice president, told an industry conference.
"It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers," he said.
Representatives of AT&T and Verizon were unavailable to comment further.
First off, the phone companies don't own the Internet. Without all that content on the Web, all they'd have is a bunch of wires awaiting phone calls (and no steady profits from monthly DSL charges).
Moreover, net neutrality has never been about blocking people from certain sites or services -- that's a red herring.
Net neutrality is about ensuring that all denizens of cyberspace have access to the same thoroughfares, and not relegating some content to country lanes while preferred data zips along the turnpike.
It's about ensuring that no sites or services are discriminated against -- by providers or consumers -- simply because they can't afford special treatment.
Sohn at Public Knowledge said the Internet's growing pains could be solved by the phone companies increasing broadband capacity, creating room for their new video services and everything else that traverses the electronic ether.
"But if they build bigger pipes, nobody would pay extra for faster access," she observed. "With bigger pipes, every site has faster access. The providers have no incentive to build out their networks."
And so we approach an era of two-tier Net access -- high-speed haves and have-nots.
"The Internet isn't the be-all, end-all of everything," Sohn said. "But it is the most democratic medium the world has ever known. Everyone has an equal voice.
"That's about to change."
