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Verizon Employees Fired For Snooping Obama's Record
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Nov 24, 2008 12:15 PM
from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
from the now-wait-a-minute dept.
longhairedgnome writes "The curiosity in President-elect Barack Obama's phone records came with a high price tag for Verizon Wireless employees. According to CNN, the workers who snooped on Obama's phone records have been fired.
'This was some employees' idle curiosity,' a company source told CNN and added 'we now consider this matter closed.'
Justice served? What about legal possibilities?" Can we expect anyone who followed a warrantless wiretap from the Bush administration to also be fired then? I mean, they violated our privacy as well.
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No. (Score:5, Funny)
It's becoming increasingly clear that only celebrities and criminals have the right to privacy.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you fail to understand the difference. The Imunity wasn't a free pass to say this was a good action. It was saying the government cohorsed you into doing this illegal action, as the government put pressure to do an illegal deed (AKA. Intrapment) they shouldn't need to suffer the legal reprocussions from it.
However if they did it themselfs then it is a different issue.
It is like a uniformed poice man directed traffic to go the wrong way on a one way streen then arrested you for going the wrong way on the street. However if you choose to go the wrong way the next day you are in the wrong.
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Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you fail to understand the difference. The Imunity wasn't a free pass to say this was a good action. It was saying the government cohorsed you into doing this illegal action, as the government put pressure to do an illegal deed (AKA. Intrapment) they shouldn't need to suffer the legal reprocussions from it.
First of all, please use a dictionary [reference.com]. Second, it's not like these corporations can be tricked into doing something illegal. They have packs of lawyers roaming their halls who have been dealing with FISA cases for decades. They know the law better than the government does most likely. They knew what they were doing wasn't legal. They did it anyway.
Your traffic analogy is very flawed. Nobody is harmed by traffic being directed the wrong way as long as it is controlled by someone. Happens all the time when there is construction. It's more like a cop asking you to do something that you know is illegal, such as shooting someone. You know it's illegal, no matter what the cop says, and once you've done it, you can't take it back. Why would you do it?
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Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
I think you mean politicans and criminals.
Same thing.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Wikipedia + mistrust of wealth does not equal valid psychology, skipper.
Re:Cluster B personality disorders (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? We berate ALL politicians here - why does Obama get a pass?
Oh, I forgot - he's for Change. And apparently was born without original sin...
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Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
Does that count?
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Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Always attack never defend has become the new debate style in American politics. This was brought on by news commentators making outrageous claims and forcing the opposition to defend and legitimize the claim.
Cry about it all you want, but instead of attacking people you don't like, try defending the ones you do. You just get pushed around by bad logic, strawmen, and people that really don't care if they lie.
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Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if I had the cash that went along with that status...I think I could live with it.
Sure makes it easier to get laid whenever you want, by just about whomever you wanted....
Damn....wish I'd studied to be a world famous guitarist in my earlier years....I've come to find that there are just not that many great looking chicks out there, screaming your name, throwing their panties at you yelling "NICE DATABASE".
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Justice Served (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you can expect President Bush to be fired for ordering the wiretap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you can expect President Bush to be fired because his term is over and it's time for him to GTFO. The Republicans were fired by the American people, although most of them hold key positions near Obama (keep your friends close, and your enemies closer).
Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Funny)
(keep your friends close, and your enemies closer).
What if your enemies have FUCKING SWORDS?
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Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you can expect President Bush to be fired because his term is over and it's time for him to GTFO. The Republicans were fired by the American people, although most of them hold key positions near Obama (keep your friends close, and your enemies closer).
I would expect you to complain about Obama now, too. He voted in favor of extending the warrantless wiretapping legislation when in the Senate. I would expect him to continue the status quo. If you don't rail against him I would infer you care less about privacy and more about your favorite politician.
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Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republicans were fired by the American people, although most of them hold key positions near Obama (keep your friends close, and your enemies closer).
Or maybe he's keeping qualified people with diverse opinions close so that he doesn't pigeon-hole himself with people who tell him things he already knows. Several of the background stories on him covered his period at the Harvard Law Review where he upset many people because his election to that post didn't give all the open positions to people of the same political affiliation. He's doing the same here.
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Awful Goddamned Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are ordered by the government to commit an act that is legal given a set of circumstances, and they inform you that those circumstances have been met, and you have no way to independently verify whether or not they have been met, only a COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOT would draw a comparison to snooping carried out on an individual's own whim.
Seriously, did I emphasize that enough? The complete fucking idiot part?
If you need to pull your assmongering little petty partisanship into this, at least make an equa
Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, we can't expect people like Nancy Pelosi - who has always been fully briefed on such things - to be fired for being such a hypocrite about it.
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Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Insightful)
Being a hypocrite is a requirement of the job. Being caught committing illegal activities should get someone fired, though. Polititians being above the laws of the people is at the core of corruption and lack of accountability. Leads us back into monarchy, where the King's word is law and the King is above the law.
Who keeps the government accountable? One minute of choice every four or so years certainly does not work very well.
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Re:Justice Served (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm talking both sides... *ANYBODY* making a career of politics is going to lose touch with the people he is supposed to represent after a period of time. By forcing them out after a set period of time, they might actually try to get something *real* done instead of constantly trying to stay in office.
Oh wait, this is the public we're talking about... *sigh*
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Re:Justice Served (Score:4, Insightful)
> I'm talking both sides... *ANYBODY* making a career of politics is going
> to lose touch with the people he is supposed to represent after a period
> of time. By forcing them out after a set period of time, they might
> actually try to get something *real* done instead of constantly trying to
> stay in office.
In general I am on board with this suggestion. However, there are two issues. The good ones are SO RARE that if they do happen to get into office, I would like to keep them there. For example, Ron Paul has been in Congress since he was 5 years old, and whatever you think about him specifically, you have to admit he sticks to principles and brings a valuable diversity to the discourse. Same, for the most part, with Kucinich and a few others.
The other issue has to do with problems that have a broader horizon than 4-6 years. For example, in the short term, deficit spending and borrowing from other nations are not problems. A $x billion deficit is not going to bite a 4-6 year politician in the ass. The shorter the term, the less motivation a politician will have for attacking issues that have a longer-term payoff. However, this is a problem anyway... I just feel like it would get worse.
And, anyway, what good does it do to oust Face #19583 of the Republicrats just to replace her with Face #983025? I think there is a problem with diversity of discourse in general in our political system, and I'm not sure that term limits will get us anything but fresher idiots.
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Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
The article says that the employees did not access the "contents of the calls"... wait does that mean that Verizon has stored electronic recordings, or transcripts?!?! of all of Obama's calls?!?!
Or does this mean that Verizon does not store that information? And who here believes them?
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
More likely it means that the Verizon rep was trying to be exceedingly clear about what was and wasn't accessed, and in the process mucked up the waters somewhat.
As for your other questions, I do not believe that they store records of what was said unless they are ordered to by the government. The hardware and software necissary to do so would be expensive and would provide no business advantage to them, unless you think they go around blackmailing people or something. I'm not saying they haven't been so ordered, only that it would be a net loss for them to do it otherwise.
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Re:Privacy (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding is that the phone companies (or the government, on their behalf) now store all phone calls for a short period of time. Then, if there is reason to tap the phone call they can go back to the recording. It allows them to tap phone calls after they happen, so long as they decide to do so within the window of opportunity before the recording is recycled.
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Re:Privacy (Score:4, Informative)
Your understanding is not correct. The infrastructure necessary to do so would be very, very expensive. Implementing something along these lines would also require an awful lot of people to be "in on it", thousands or more. These two considerations count for more than my third point, which is that it isn't legal.
Some companies might have a policy like this. For example, many call centers record all calls (and notify you that they do). But the entire US telephone infrastructure? Please put your tin foil hat on the table and back away slowly.
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Re:Privacy (Score:5, Informative)
What we did have access to, and what these people probably access, was just a regular calling list (numbers who called the phone, and numbers called from the phone).
And from what I was told while working there, the company didn't record any calls unless specifically ordered to by authorities.
- John
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Re:Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not. It's perfectly feasible for a large telcom to do this. Because it's illegal? Phhft! Here's a modest proposal I drafted some time ago, based on some conservative estimates. Not sure if I already posted this, but since it's not entirely off topic, what the hell. I'll indulge my inner conspiracy nut.
Average US telephone usage: 600 minutes month, say 900 mins
= 30 mins/day = 1800 sec/day
Telephone Codec data rate: ~10KB/sec
=> Average user needs 18000 KB/day to store conversation ~1.76 MB/day
For one million users ~ 1.68 TB/day
Approximate cost per Terabyte(Hard Disk) as of 2007 ~ $300USD per TB
=> Give 2x data redundancy ~ $600USD per TB
=> ~$1,008 USD per one million users per day
World population ~7 billion
=> ~$7.1 million USD per day
=> It would cost approximately $2.6 billion USD per year to permanently store all the telephone conversations of everyone in the entire world. Assuming talktime rates of ~900 mins per month.
Addendum:
Approximate NSA budget (estimated) ~$3.6 billion USD
So for the paranoid amoung you, don't worry about people listening in on your phone calls. They probably already have.
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Re:Privacy (Score:4, Insightful)
The article says that the employees did not access the "contents of the calls"... wait does that mean that Verizon has stored electronic recordings, or transcripts?!?! of all of Obama's calls?!?!
No, it means that the employees only looked at who called the phone, and who was called from the phone. Basically all of the information listed on Obama's phone bill.
Or does this mean that Verizon does not store that information? And who here believes them?
I don't think anyone here honestly believes that Verizon would store every phone conversation made over their network. It would cost way too much money, and it would be a complete waste of resources.
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Was encouraged to do this in credit card industry (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work doing telephone customer service for First USA Bank. In our training class, they actually encouraged us to look up the accounts of random celebrities. My whole class would come up with names and type them in to see if they had an account with us. We'd also frequently show each other particularly bad credit reports that came up on applications.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I love First USA (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work doing telephone customer service for First USA Bank. In our training class, they actually encouraged us to look up the accounts of random celebrities. My whole class would come up with names and type them in to see if they had an account with us. We'd also frequently show each other particularly bad credit reports that came up on applications.
That's interesting. I believe that's the same bank that opened a credit card account for me without my knowledge, and sent me a collections notice for the annual fee plus late fees 6 months later, totaling hundreds of dollars. I'd never received an offer from them, let alone a card, nor would I accepted the thing had they done so. Oddly enough, making it go away only took about an hour on the phone, which leads me to believe it wasn't the first time they'd done this. Worse, the same thing happened the next year, making the "accident" angle a little tough to believe. I'm guessing those clowns lean on employees to basically make up accounts and forge signatures. Really cute. I regret not contacting the attorney general, because that stuff is outrageously illegal.
So basically, what you were seeing looks to have been the least illegal thing happening there. ;)
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Why politicize this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we really need this politicized to have a discussion about the topic at hand? Which is thoughtless employees snooping around where they have access but apparently no ethics or morals. Something not even close to the situation with warrentless wiretapping, and in no way related? Do we really need this, Taco?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, this should simply be self-evident.
Don't forget that it also used to be self-evident that white people can't marry black people, that a man can have multiple wives, and that a man can and should beat his wife to keep her in line.
Society and its mores have, and continue to, evolve.
Not likely illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it be illegal? Disclosure, yes. But these were VZW employees who were given the ability to look at records as part of their job. VZW's policy though is that they only look at records that they have a reason to - for customer service, billing, etc.
Unless they turned these over to an outside party (media, government, etc) then there's probably nothing illegal happening. Completely different from the wiretaps.
It's amazing though that the employees are still dumb enough to not realize that their actions, even if they don't change anything, can be tracked.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But these were VZW employees who were given the ability to look at records as part of their job.
the ability to do something does not equal authorization to do it. By your logic cops aren't breaking the law if they start shooting people randomly on the street, and surgeons are free to do anything they want to you once they get you under the knife.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You should have finished reading the entirety of his comment. He went on to say that VZW's policy is that they only do so as required to for their job. They upheld their policy by punishing these employees as severely as they could (by firing them).
and that's the problem...... (Score:3, Interesting)
But these were VZW employees who were given the ability to look at records as part of their job.
Maybe they shouldn't have that ability? If I was Verizon I would design the system such that the Level 1 CSRs don't see any details about the account until they enter some verification info provided by the customer. They always ask you for your account password or SSN to verify who you are when you call -- so why not design the system such that they don't see anything either until that information is entered?
I can't think of a ligitmate reason that a typical call center person would have for needing to ac
How many? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many? (Score:5, Interesting)
Snooping is easy, getting away with it is not. A friend of a friend was a telecom employee snooping on records and got fired (girlfriend looking up her ex-boyfriend's phone log and possibly text messages).
I don't know how it works, but queries like that into the customer records throw up flags that management can see. Apparently, they're not doing a good enough job instructing employees that these safeguards exist since it happens so often.
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A private affair (Score:4, Interesting)
The employees were fired for violating company policy (ie, without management approval). As company policy is to assist police in warrantless wiretaps, employees who helped with those would not be fired. This kind of thing happens in hospitals, debt collection businesses, and government all the time. It is not really newsworthy unless a pattern of abuse can be demonstrated.
Ironic... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have generally been an Obama supporter, but was very disappointed that he voted for telecom immunity in the FISA bill last year. Apparently it is ok for corporations as a whole
to snoop on your calls, but not for individual employees to snoop on his. (Note: I am not condoning the action of the employee, it just seems interesting at what level justice applies).
Well, Obama voted for FISA. (Score:5, Interesting)
Obama voted for FISA after saying he wouldn't. He and his cronies really don't have any room to complain. Why should Obama be able to snoop on "the people" when "the people" cannot snoop on him? Obama is potentially (being president at all) the most dangerous man in the nation as he is Commander-In Chief and probably the most powerful man in the world.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any military secrets or stuff, of course, but the irony is just rather amusing.
Least privilege (Score:3, Informative)
This is a non-event. Any quality employer will have pretty specific policies about accessing business data on a need-to-know only basis.
I work for Verizon (Score:4, Interesting)
Obama says no. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not where I work, and not me... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm at a major financial institution. technically, I have fairly broad access to records that could include payment and credit information, personal information, and even a great deal of info on the places people shop.
It would not only not occur to me to look up someone's records just because they are a celeb etc, but if I had a case involving a recognizable person or business, I would be very careful and keep my inquiries to a minimum. I would expect our security teams to be watching accesses to any number of accounts.
And I wouldn't be whining if in a moment of weakness I went too far. There are some things you just don't do. Someone is watching. Count in it.
I also know a few people who provide services or support to the sort of customer you would consider a person of note. We don't discuss anything of a sensitive nature, though I offer them congratulations when I recognize they did something exceptional for a customer that made our newsletter. If we are working on issues that disclose sensitive data, I just work the issue and keep my comments to myself. And I secure any data I work with temporarily, destroying it when I don't need it any more.
Seems incredibly stupid, on a par with the ID10Ts looking through Britney's medical records not so long ago. I hope these VZW ex-employees find work, but perhaps a stint at McDonalds will give them the proper perspective on privacy. An expensive lesson, and one earned from the sounds of it.
There is no excuse.
Re:National security and terrorists (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask John McCain, he'll tell you that Obama pals around with terrorists. Perhaps this was a case of national security!
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Re:presidential pardon (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:presidential pardon (Score:4, Informative)
Back to the Clintons.
Who did he save?
Roger Clinton, Jr. - brother of Bill Clinton. After serving a year in federal prison for cocaine possession.
Dan Rostenkowski - United States Representative Democratic Party.
Susan McDougal - partners with Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the failed Whitewater deal.
Henry Cisneros - Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count for lying to the FBI, and was fined $10,000.
Mel Reynolds - Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives.
Bill was corrupt.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And those would be... what? Regardless, it's up to the local district attorney to seek criminal charges.
Given that he's about to become the POTUS, I think he's got more important things to worry about. Plus, it would seem rather petty by presidential standards.
They got a slap on the wrist (Score:4, Insightful)
They only were the government violating the public trust by abusing their ability to access confidential records on private individuals for partisan political reasons. They keep their jobs.
These guys were just with a company that anyone can decide to stop using. They get fired.
So we can take one or both of two things from this based on the case differences:
- Companies are better at ridding themselves of bad people.
- The government workers were Democrats working in a Democrat-run state, trying to help the Democrat presidential candidate, so they get a pass.
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