Credo Mobile Releases Industry's First Transparency Report

memnock writes "Wired and The Washington Post both report that mobile service provider CREDO is the first telecom to release a report detailing requests from the government for customer information. From Wired: 'A small telecom believed to be at the center of a historic court battle over government surveillance published its first transparency report on Thursday, noting that it had received 16 government requests for customer data in 2013. But the report may be most significant for what it doesn't say.'"

Comments

CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[damn_registrars]

For those not familiar with them, CREDO mobile is a carrier who donates some of their profits to left-leaning charities, causes, and social groups. They have often advertised their network on democratic underground, daily kos, and other democratic affiliated sites.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

ok, and? They are actually fighting a good fight here. Lets try and look at it from that point of view. I dont really care what direction someone leans if they do what is right, and taking onthe government for its over reach of power is the right thing to do.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm glad you let us know those facts.

Since I'm conservative, my brain is already making ad hominem attacks on them and discounting anything they stick up for or say - even if it's for my own God given rights and against government abuses of authority.

Re-reading that, I don't think anyone will get the satire.

So....who gives a rat's ass what their politics are if they are telling the truth?

One would have to be a fascist to have a problem with what this company publishing this information.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

In my area they seem to be a Mobile Virtual Network Operator using sprint. If they are uncooperative what would stop the government from going to Sprint for the information?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

umm, what do you mean "people like me"? Who do you think i am?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, they do gloat about defeating 5 Tea Party members in 2012. That means that they spend their money to push their political beliefs into congress and manipulate the american public.

http://www.credomobile.com/mission/political-victories-current.aspx

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Kamina? Is that you?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[heypete]

The government is probably looking for subscriber information (e.g. name, address, etc.). Sprint would almost certainly have access to call logs and location history but probably don't have the personal information of subscribers of one of their MVNOs.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

I convinced countless friends of mine to not vote for obama, or romney for that matter, I even bought them beer! Is that manipulating the public?? or is it only bad when someone with more money does it?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

They used to send me a lot of spam. I never used their service, and I don't know how I got on their mailing list, but for a couple years I couldn't seem to get them to stop sending me emails about how they're doing so much good for the world. I was never quite sure if they were trying to sell me mobile phone service, or if they were soliciting donations for charity, or if it was just some scam.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if that's how you feel, hopefully you weren't upset about the whole corporate person-hood thing. Or was that whole thing only bad when it was companies you disagreed with were doing it?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[damn_registrars]

One would have to be a fascist to have a problem with what this company publishing this information.

Which is exactly why many slashdot conservatives - many of whom are fascists under the guise of "ron paul libertarians" - would be against this company releasing this information. The partisan-driven world that many live in here on slashdot often boils down to "if the other guy supports it, it is evil no matter what", and by association "if someone who supports the other guy does it, I must oppose it and do the opposite".

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[haruchai]

He has absolutely no idea and really doesn't care except that your ideology is different from his.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

corporations are a group of people, they should be treated as such. If anything we didnt go far enough with it, we dont hold the heads of the companies responsible for what the companies do like we would a parent to a child. Meaning if someone runs company X, they seem to get all the benifits of personhood, but none of the negatives, no one is ever held responsible criminally when their company does something criminal. Start holding the owners of these companies personally liable and stop letting them hide behind the corp and i think things would be better.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

clearly you havent payed attention to my posts over the past 10 years.... I want the federal government shrunk WAY the fuck down, and to actually follow the constitution. Im a constitutionalist not a 1 hotbutton issue voter thank you very much. If it is not written in the constitution, it is to be left to the states. end of story

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

obviously, because most anyone would agree that I lean right wing. me and him probably agree but he is blinded by partisan issues, that he could not even see that

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes it is. Also you don't run a SuperPAC...

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[lgw]

Wonder why I took you for a hippie, ganjadude? Strange isn't it, ganjadude, that I would just assume you were a "legalize it" lefty stoner who only cared about one thing.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[ganjadude]

and that is why we should not judge a book by its cover LGW. It may shock you but there are people who are all pro pot in the right wing as well, sadly the GOP establishment is so against it that we dont get any traction

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Bless your heart. You're really not all that bright, are you...

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[hoeferbe]

damn_registrars wrote:

Which is exactly why many slashdot conservatives - many of whom are fascists under the guise of "ron paul libertarians" - would be against this company releasing this information.

I'm sorry, but what?! I have never met someone claiming to be a Ron Paul Libertarian (of whom I've seen many comments here on Slashdot from) express opinions that promote the military-industrial complex, the keeping of secrets of government action by force or the trampling of individual rights. Conservative fascists hiding themselves as Ron Paul Libertarians would be like Neo-Nazi skinheads hiding amongst members of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

With that said, I have seen people who blindly oppose whatever the `other team` is doing or blindly supporting what `their team` is doing without respect to principles -- but I've mostly seen that in the real world in partisan venues. (Fox, MSNBC, etc.) I don't see it here on Slashdot, as much.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

the left-right debate is getting a bit dated

if voting could change anything, it would be illegal

--an anarchist

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[damn_registrars]

I'm sorry, but what?! I have never met someone claiming to be a Ron Paul Libertarian (of whom I've seen many comments here on Slashdot from) express opinions that promote the military-industrial complex, the keeping of secrets of government action by force or the trampling of individual rights.

Some of those are not the fascist ideals I speak of.

The fascism that slashdot Paullowers promote is closer to the original ideals of fascism; ie totalitarian leadership with a greatly reduced ability of the people to express or seek their will.

However your notion of the military-industrial complex is not far from the Paullower ideals. In a Paul government industry would be the military. Industry would be free to pursue any goals they aspire to, including exerting physical force overseas. Currently our government has regulations to discourage companies from attacking other nations in pursuit of profit; under Paul and his Randian philosophy the gloves come off. Sure, he may be opposed to our country declaring war (as he doesn't want his tax dollars to pay for it) but if Coca-Cola wants to team up with Lockheed Martin to go sack Iran he would not interfere. It might not be exactly the military-industrial complex that we have now, but it would certainly win approval from a President Paul.

As for individual rights, the Paul doctrine calls for dismantling government to the point where your rights only go as far as your dollars. Paullowers on slashdot have even endorsed privatizing law enforcement and the court system, which would not hold well for people facing off against wealthier people or against corporations at all.

Conservative fascists hiding themselves as Ron Paul Libertarians would be like Neo-Nazi skinheads hiding amongst members of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

No. Ron Paul fascists just have a different idea of fascism, and do a good job of hiding theirs within plain sight.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Kjella]

If anything we didnt go far enough with it, we dont hold the heads of the companies responsible for what the companies do like we would a parent to a child.

Not sure how it is in the US system but here in Norway it's more like the corporate system than not. Parents can with certain limitations be found liable for their children's actions and be made to pay restitution, but we'd never put a parent in prison over something their child did.

If we were to try going after individuals criminally, why start at the top? Shouldn't it be the people who actually did something illegal? And the nearest manager who ordered it? Making the CEO the catch-all of every crook in the entire company will do very little to discourage others from resorting to illegal means, unless the illegal activity goes all the way to the top. The head of a business division can do lots without telling the CEO.

Except you'd really not like that, because you know how it is when your boss is ordering you around. If you say "I refuse to do X, it's not secure and I might end up getting fucked over for it" you're probably heading straight for the unemployment line. The SOX requirements do as I understand it make the CFO criminally responsible for the books being correct and everyone I've talked to says it created a massive reporting burden throughout the companies.

Going after the owners is even more hopeless, they're as often the victims as the victors. Should all the Enron investors go joins their bosses in jail because they share guilt? And what happens when you own 0.01% of a company, I'm just one person who is either 100% in jail or not. Do I get called in to serve a day in prison for the company's 100 year sentence? And good luck getting all foreign investors extradited.

Besides if you follow that logic then guilt should just flow through the investors of investors of investors to the actual people, like say your pension funds. Wouldn't it be great if you're the one being put in jail because your pension funds decided to invest in BP which was found guilty of a criminal oil spill screw-up? As opposed to the actual people inside BP who was responsble for the safety systems?

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw an anarchist protesting in Greece demanding to be given his rights.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[lgw]

No, much of the right is for any sort of smaller government, no surprise there but they don't think stoners are cool and choose online identities that say "look at me, I'm a stoner, hahaha!". That's the part shocking for someone on the right "ganjadude".

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they donate some of their profits to charities chosen by their subscribers. Each year, subscribers are able to vote on which charities they support and by what percentage. Yes, they tend to be left-leaning charities.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[dryeo]

The problem is Americans being confused between right, left, authoritarian and anti-authoritarian. Hint they're actually 2 different axises on the political spectrum with left authoritarians, right authoritarians, left libertarians and right libertarians.
Authoritarian is obvious in its meaning but the left is for the people and right is for the aristocracy in its original meaning.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[AK Marc]

Ron/Rand Paul libertarians tend to indicate they don't believe in any human rights at all, but that there is a heirarchy. You don't have any rights, as they are all trumped by the owner of the land you are on. Property rights exist, but no human rights exist. You have the right to own property, if you can not afford property, you have no rights at all. All rights are derived through property ownership/control.

That's sufficiently fascist for most people to be considered fascist, and seems consistent with the libertarian stance.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Mr. Slippery]

I have never met someone claiming to be a Ron Paul Libertarian (of whom I've seen many comments here on Slashdot from) express opinions that promote the military-industrial complex, the keeping of secrets of government action by force or the trampling of individual rights.

Ron Paul -- obviously the definitive "Ron Paul (so-called) Libertarian" -- is anti-choice, anti-religious freedom (believes "The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers."), pro-censorship (introduced a Constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning), anti-privacy, and supported the criminalization of homosexuality by state governments.

Paul is not libertarian in any meaningful sense of that word. He's anti-federalist, but fully authoritarian, happy to have government fsck you over if you step out of his vision of what a white Christian American should be...just so long as it's a state government. He's a terrible excuse for a human being and anyone supporting him should be deeply, deeply ashamed.

Re:CREDO is a left-leaning carrier

[Anonymous Coward]

so there's only two positions: left or right? what happened to centrist?

The most insidious thing is the unknown

[TrollstonButterbeans]

The most insidious thing is the unknown.

Because the unknown can be:

1. The worst thing ever.
2. Whatever you imagine.
3. Anything you imagine.
4. Anything you want it to be.

Because it is undefined.

After reading the report, I think it met expectations.

This is a smoke screen.

[Anonymous Coward]

All signals traffic is intercepted and all of it can be accessed,
and a warrant is just a formality which gives a search a stamp of
legitimacy after the fact.

Encryption won't keep things secret at the highest levels.

Plan your sensitive communications accordingly.

Re:This is a smoke screen.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I believed what You said, the only way I could plan my sensitive communications...would be to plan to communicate after the revolution.

Mostly meaningless

[dalias]

CREDO Mobile is just a reseller of access to Sprint's mobile network. The backdoors for logging/intercepting/etc. call data are all going to be at the carrier level (Sprint), not the reseller, so there's no need for law enforcement/NSA/etc. to go through CREDO at all.

Re:Mostly meaningless

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'm afraid this is not true. Traffic from behind various proxies would need more local monitoring: man-in-the-middle attacks with pilfered SSL keys are easiest when you can access the private keys from the load balacers or proxies that host local copies of the private keys. It's certainly true that the broadest access to core network traffic would be upstream, but assembling the information into a useful whole, or a useful transctipt, is easiest with more localized monitoring.

Re:Mostly meaningless

[Mikkeles]

I don't necessarily disagree, but I do wonder why the government felt the need to make requests directly to CREDO.

Re:Mostly meaningless

[DMUTPeregrine]

As a Sprint reseller their customers are using Sprint's towers and network equipment. Placing the backdoors on Sprint's network is plenty to get localized monitoring.

Re:Mostly meaningless

[grunthos]

In the MVNO case, Sprint knows that phone X was used at tower Y, but doesn't know who the phone belongs to. Credo knows that part.

I read the article link

[Anonymous Coward]

I see we are ignoring the topic of the phone companies willfully giving over any data without requests. While they may "fighting to good fight" it is obviously painful we cannot trust these companies activities when there not on a PR campaign.

And of course it pretty easy for the NSA to obtain the data when you give away the keys to your encryption. Or fail to implement a new encryption that would be extremely difficult to crack even with a super computer.

Credo unusable for work smartphones

[NoahsMyBro]

Several years ago I wanted to switch to Credo, but they had no Windows Phones & I needed a WP for work, so I couldn't use them. They eventually got Windows Phones, but their ToS prohibits using the data plan for business uses, or as a hotspot, or with Push-email (ActiveSync).

So as much as I'd like the money I'm spending already on mobile service to benefit Credo's causes, I can't use them. I routinely receive emails from them asking me to switch, and each time I wonder how much $ Credo is leaving on the table by forbidding these uses of their network.

Liberal my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if all their IT weren't staffed with contractors and H1b, I'd believe they were "liberal".

Kudos on the Oklahoma call center though. Surprised they couldn't outsource that to non-Americans as well.

Re: Liberal my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, one of their call centers is non-American, they outsource IT to India, and are anti-union.

PROBLEM: They might be lying

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with all these so-called transparency reports is that there is NO WAY TO VERIFY THEM.

Only 2 groups know if the company is lying:
(1) The company
(2) The cops

Both groups have an incentive to lie.

When I was at Allegiance Telecom in the late 1990's, we were asked (by subpoena originating from a defense attorney) how many wiretaps we executed. A federal judge ordered us to lie...in another court case. So our lawyers did.