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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."
This is getting blown way out of proportion and has a simple explanation:
You also have to BCC your immediate manager to remain employed.
My work here is dung.
AT&T urged its employees to post on the FCC's net neutrality website. You can do the same, you have until Thursday to post.
http://openinternet.gov/
But my wife received a letter from her Employer asking her to lobby her congress/senate folks on behalf of the health care debate. She didn't feel comfortable doing it at all and told her boss so. What you do at your home should be purely divorced from your work. I'm sure there are some places where this doesn't hold, but I think most office drone jobs don't apply. I think it's pure bullshit and someone should call their sorry asses on the carpet for it. I'll vote or lobby whoever the fuck I want and however I see fit.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
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.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Some of us would like to preserve the illusion that our government isn't totally at the beck and call of corporate interests. This sort of astroturfing is exactly what makes people cynical, when individual citizens are roped in to parroting the lines of the place they work for.
Perhaps they won't check to see if you have done their bidding, but what if they did? What if it turns out that was a job requirement buried somewhere in that huge contract you signed when you started your job?
The current lobbying system is bad enough, we don't need to make it even worse by blurring the line between the opinions of individuals and that of corporations.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
That's nice, but here we're not talking about letters to your Congressional representative, we're talking about comments to be filed as part of a formal FCC rulemaking process. Comments filed in a formal rulemaking process are public records. In fact, the FCC has an online search system that lets you search all filed comments, by, among other things, the name of the person or entity filing the comment, and the results include additional information like the mailing address of the filer.
Consequently, especially if you are only worried about positive confirmation (IOW, if you don't mind some false negatives, but want to be fairly immune to false positives), its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
FTA:
Cicconi explained how employees could use a personal e-mail account to post comments on the FCC's net neutrality Web site to about the rules.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
Yet millions of people send chain e-mails every single day.
Sure the CEO can't tell anybody followed his suggestion, but how many people actually KNOW he can't?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If you don't like it, see figure 1!!!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
When I've worked for large companies, the further up the chain the less likely I'd be to care whatsoever what it said. That makes this even less of a suggestion, and more like a wish, that anyone may or may not fulfill (or in fact even read as this sounds like a message I would have just skipped over). It's not like a "high level exec" is going to come by the office next Monday and ask how the letter to the FCC is coming!
I don't see anything wrong with a "high level exec" or anyone else saying that if you care about the issue, contact your congressman. Who are YOU to say that all employees agree with what he wants them to say? Meanwhile he has pointed out to them just who to talk to, one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
We need to do the last mile our selves. The FCC needs to do there job and give people the right to put our wireless router on the roof and forward local traffic. Until then its communications by the monopoly for the monopoly. We can not get a competition between ISPs until the last mile can be done without total control between 1 or 3 super providers.
After that, perhaps a work program can be set up to run backbone lines as a way to make jobs for people out of work. It's all about creating the infrastructure.
I agree. AT&T and Verizon should be forbidden from donating money or sending lobbyists into Congress, but if the individual human beings want to do the former, then I have no problem with it. Corporations should not have a right to free speech, but people should.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
its pretty easy for an employer to check if their employees have followed through on such a "recommendation."
The letter is clearly written as a suggestion, not a demand. Yes, it uses standard scare tactics to suggest that if their point of view loses, there will be massive layoffs, but it doesn't actually say you'll be fired or even disciplined in any way for failing to participate in this particular lobbying effort. Thus, if you're fired and you can show that you were fired because you didn't do this, you can likely sue for damages and win (especially if you can show others who didn't participate were also fired). Even in at-will states, you're begging for a lawsuit if you fire an employee for something like this.
Along the same lines, my employer has its very own Political Action Committee. I occasionally get emails asking me to join the PAC and help advance "our interests". I ignore those emails, and am not a member of the PAC, nor have I ever donated a penny to it. And yet, I've not been fired nor have I been denied promotions or raises.
Actually, he can tell. You see, Bill Gates has developed a new email tracking software, so if you forward that to the fcc, you could win $100,000
The Sierra Club and FSF are voluntary associations of people whose whole bases for association is a common ideology: members of those organizations pay the leaders of those organizations specifically to help them acheive particular shared ideological aims. So, advice from those leaders on steps the members can take to make the money that they pay to acheive those ends be more effective is consistent with the job those members are paying the professional staff of the organization to do. And the members of the Sierra Club and FSF aren't dependent on those organizations, generally, for their livelihood.
AT&T employees aren't, as a general rule, voluntarily paying AT&T management to help them defeat net neutrality, and are, OTOH, dependent on AT&T for their jobs, so the circumstances aren't even remotely parallel.
Of course, this *is* AT&T, a company that was allowed to get away with blatant violations of the law and snooping on American citizens without a warrant.
In fact, the one thing we know with absolute certainty is that they *can* tell if the employees have followed the CEO's suggestion.
Oh, yeah . . that. . .
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
"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."
We get periodic emails along similar lines, couched as suggestions, in the large bank in which I am a cog. Know what happens? The vast majority of our 10s of thousands of employees just ignore them. They often get lost in the daily email noise. I suspect that the people at AT&T are no different. And surprise! no repercussions, because they /are/ just suggestions.
I don't like this in any way (it also irritates me when they do it at work), but to imply that people are somehow being coerced into actually doing as stated in the email it is its own kind of aggravating. Try to give us drones some credit, eh?
Now pardon me, I've got to go -- I almost forgot to write out my monthly check to our PAC!
What's the big deal?
Preaching politics on the company dime is right up there with promoting religion during office hours. It's your employer abusing their captive audience. If you don't go along, you could be seen as not being a team player. You're getting paid to do a job, not be a political pawn. It worked so well for the health insurance companies, having their employees out acting like dickwads at public meetings. Be sure and remind them to change their employer branded clothing to look more like a real grassroots uprising.
And it was wrong. I remember when the internet went private. I didn't hear AT&T or any of the others complaining about all that new infrastructure and business they inherited. Now that the system needs major upgrades no one wants to pony up. Instead they want to find ways to tax traffic, make money without making any additional investment. The Wall Street model. Net neutrality rules threaten that grand plan. They might not be able to cover those multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. Oh, noes!
Tell you what, if those circuits are that unprofitable, sell them and get out of the infrastructure business. No one owes AT&T a living. If it's too tough out there, get into banking. Corporate whiners are the worst.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Sort of like when Apple tied the iPhone to the ATT network. Oh man the shit storm that erupted from customer sent them packing...
Sort of like when Charter started imposing bandwidth caps on customers who had their advertised "unlimited" internet access. Yup, turned that one right around.
Sort of like when *any* cellular network charged for both incoming and outgoing SMS packets. Good thing that uproar ended that practice.
Sort of like when ISPs started redirecting failed DNS website queries to their own ad-laden search pages. God I never thought that would stop!
What you describe is how it *should* work, and believe me we would all love if it did. Unfortunately that's not how the real world always works. Fact of the matter is there just isn't enough competition in ISPs for customers to really vote with their wallets. If customers can't vote with their wallets, companies don't have consequences for their actions. ATT does something you don't like... are you going to go to another DSL provider? That still uses ATT pipes? Internet backbones are still a natural monopoly in their respective regions and I don't expect some new technology will come around to change that. As much as we hate giving the government more power here, I would rather see some decisions made by a group who is at least remotely answerable to me versus a company that is only answerable to its shareholders.
+1 Disagree
The free and open part of it is the best thing going. Please do not screw it up with regulations like the net neutrality proposal.
People have no clue what net neutrality is, and just assume it's government regulation that will make things worse. Hopefully some influential people on our side reads those comments and understands what these people really mean. Otherwise the overwhelming majority of responses are against net neutrality, which is not the kind of backing we want the big corps to have.
My webcomic
Because people have posted a bunch of fear-laden scenarios about what might happen, but have not actually come to pass?
What, like blocking users who download too much then refusing to admit it even after tools are produced to show that Comcast was generating spoofed RST packets? Oh no, that would never come to pass.
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Last I heard, Sandvine is doing pretty good... oh wait, the people whose applications stop working aren't Sandvine's customers.
The reason this is going to happen is the same reason that health reform is happening: no matter how much FUD the opponents throw out there, their FUD can't hold a candle to the reality of how it is now. "Oh no, nobody will invest in teh terabitz intarwebs!" but hey, at least Comcast won't be able to block me from using Lotus Notes.
Sure, there are good reasons not to change the regulation on either, but the industries are trying their damnedest to make sure that everyone knows the reasons why we should. You'd think that with health care reform breathing down their necks, insurers would take a timeout on refusing coverage due to unrelated issues, but no, as far as I can tell, they're fanning the flames to ensure that they'll have the hottest funeral pyres around.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I get all the food for my family from a regional supermarket chain. They're the reason I can EAT. Does this mean my political views should align with the president of the supermarket's?
No. Work is just somewhere I happen to trade my time for money.
Continuing with more evidence that all this and more has "come to pass":
Vonage and other VoIP providers had more than one ISP prevent customers from receiving the services they were paying for until the government stepped in.
BT replacing charities' web advertisements with their own. Charities! Why don't they just eat warm puppies fresh from the oven while they're at it? The least they could have done was replace those "punch the monkey" ads or seizure inducing "you've won!" ads.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The general meme I have seen most places is that "Net Neutrality" is the only way to go. However, I have to ask, if your ISP promises to treat all data streams equally, how are services that need guaranteed low latency going to work?
For most internet activities, such as watching youtube videos, downloading or uploading large files, and viewing web pages, a second or two of latency is no big deal. The ISP can give you bandwidth when it has it to spare.
However, for things like online gaming, Video and audio chat, and ESPECIALLY for cloud gaming services, latency is CRITICAL. The ISP needs to allocate the highest priority to transmitting these packets without any delay. Even if it has to push back or pause requests from other applications. No, a bigger pipe is not the answer : bandwidth will always be a scarce commodity, and your ISP needs to be able to make sure that certain services always have enough.
You'd have to run a client on your machine or something to specify or sign a particular packet stream as needing low latency communications. The ISP would either meter your total "low latency" bandwidth for a month or limit how much bandwidth/second it could use up.
Doing it this way might not be network neutral, but it's THE way to make services like cloud gaming and video chat work smoothly and without problems.
The union that "represents" my co-workers and myself make human sacrifices of those who speak less than favorably of them, many of my co-workers have been killed. I am also forced to spend 60% of my income directly to funding abortions.
Now what was that about the AT&T? I forgot.
Fortunately, we have a system that combines incompetent government bureaucracy with the unaccountability of a corporation.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy