Government Accuses Sprint of Overcharging For Wiretapping Expenses

realized writes with news that the Federal government thinks Sprint overcharged them $21 million when billing for wiretaps. From the article: "Sprint, like all the nation's carriers, must comply with the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which requires telcos to be capable of providing government-ordered wiretapping services. The act also allows carriers to recoup 'reasonable expenses' associated with those services. Sprint inflated charges approximately 58 percent between 2007 and 2010, according to a lawsuit the administration brought against the carrier today. ... The suit said that the wireless carrier breached Federal Communications Commission guidelines of 2006 that prohibited carriers from using intercept charges to recover costs of modifying 'equipment, facilities or services' to comply with the Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act."

Comments

Re:Refund on overhearing my pizza order

[anagama]

The modern incarnation of tea party groups is basically a lesson in major party co-option and poisoning of a movement to neutralize it. The Democrats certainly don't want to focus on its origins, because those are rooted in an anti-war / anti-coroporate welfare philosophy and Democrats still like to pretend they aren't neo-cons. The GOP certainly didn't want it to spread and disturb its social issue message which it uses to cover its financially wanton behavior.

As for recent history, which has been effectively erased by both parties, there were Ron Paul Tea Party events in 2007 with a major focus on ending the wars in the middle east and protecting civil liberties: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... Check out the tags on the boxes being thrown in the the water for example around 1 minute in: "iraq war" "corporate welfare" "homeland security" etc. Or this video from Nov. 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... which is 80% anti-war (warning, pictures of burned and blown up kids from Iraq or Afghanistan).

Then shortly after Obama's election, Karl Denninger popularized an idea of sending tea bags to Congress. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-... His focus was on the fraud and abuse the Feds winked at during the financial meltdown, and he was livid when the GOP coopted the Tea Party, and turned it into some "Guns, Gays, God" focused BS: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-... Indeed, it took almost no time for the GOP to co-opt the Tea Party: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

And in case you think Denninger is just another Koch brother wannabe, he voted for Obama in 2007: http://voxday.blogspot.com/201...

He also supported the Occupy Movement's focus on banking fraud and interestingly, thought it's lack of centralization good, seeing centralization as the fatal exploitable flaw for tea party groups: http://rt.com/usa/tea-occupy-d...

Anyway, today's Tea Party is a caricature the DNC and GOP created for their own purposes by poisoning the original ideas.

Re:Refund on overhearing my pizza order

[budgenator]

Interesting that there's no office or central representative that we could ask, "what does the [Tea, TEA] Party mean anyway? Can't even ask the people who are funding it. Some Party.

I thought it stands for "Move out of Your Mother's Basement and Buy your Own damned Hot-Pockets", it takes a bit of artistic license to get there, but it is what it is. It's also Kind of like Anonymous, but with jobs and mortgages to pay.