AT&T Suggests To 300K Employees To Lobby the FCC

Several readers sent in the news that AT&T's top lobbyist sent a letter to all 300,000 employees urging them to give feedback to the FCC as it gears up for rulemaking on net neutrality. He even supplied talking points approved by the PR department. The lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, suggested that employees use their personal email accounts when they weigh in with the FCC. Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."

Comments

There FCC!

[NoYob]

Subtract 300,000 from the tally of folks who are against Net Neutrality!

Actually, subtract 1.2 million because the American family averages 4 people and you know that every AT&T employee will have their spouse and 2 kids lobby. And, if you include the bogus ones that are named for the dog, well, the numbers just keep growing.

Let's just put it this way, every letter against Net Neutrality is bogus because of this.

Verizon did this as well

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Verizon employee and received an email sent to basically all different sub-companies and departments about this. They even created a theme site about it, how to take action in different ways...

Will be trying to switch job soon.

Re:Not entirely the same

[Anonymous Coward]

What you do at your home should be purely divorced from your work.

I agree 100%

A couple years ago I had a similar situation happen to me. It was suggested in a mass-email to comment on an anti-spam law, except to do so against the bill (IE to favor spamming)

This sort of took me by surprise, as I worked in the IT department, and at the time we did NO email advertisements, nor used any services to do so. So I figured, why on earth would this be the case unless A) we planned to spam, or B) the boss simply didn't understand the matter.

I made the same asumption. What I do on my own time and from my own email address is not work. If they want that time, or those resources (email), they are damn sure going to pay me for them.

I silently ignored the request.

Half a year or so went by and I forgot all about it. I came in on a Monday to learn that the FCC comment postings are public record, and you can lookup the email/name of everyone that posted.
Needless to say, my name was no where to be found.

At this point I was given some team player speech and told why in pretty blunt terms. After explaining why I do not agree, and that it would be a death sentence for our company to advertise that way.

Boss made the stupid mistake of explaining the errors of my ways in email.
He asked me to resign, which I refused. The next day I was fired.

Fortunately for me, this is not a valid reason to terminate someones employment, and I got a nice settlement out of the lawsuit to live on before finding my next job.

Oddest part of the whole story, that company STILL does not spam that I can tell, or that any of my ex-coworkers in their IT department know of. I am left with the belief that the boss had other reasons for this, not related to that company.
Who knows what type of business he does on the side after all.

In the end, I am very happy with the new job I found, and have no regrets over what happened.

Just thought I would share.

Re:Please People, You're Spreading Misinformation

[SETIGuy]

Letters to the FCC are public records, so AT&T can find out if you wrote a letter to the FCC and what you put into it.