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.'"

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.

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[ganjadude]

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

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[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

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[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.

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[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

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[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".

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[haruchai]

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

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[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

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[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

[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.

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[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

[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.

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[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 th

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[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".

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[hoeferbe]

damn_registrars [slashdot.org] wrote [slashdot.org]:

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

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[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 o

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[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 wit

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[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 [prospect.org], 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 [lewrockwell.com]

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[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.

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.

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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[Mikkeles]

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

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[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.

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.

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.