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Wyden Exposes Which Phone Carriers Don't Notify Customers About Government Surveillance
"While now rectified for Senate-funded lines, significant gaps remain, especially for the campaign and personal phones used by most senators. I urge your support for legislative changes to allow the sergeant at arms (SAA) to protect senators' phones and accounts from cyber threats, both foreign and domestic," he wrote. "I also urge you to consider switching your campaign and personal phone lines to other carriers that will provide notice of government surveillance."
Wyden noted that "while AT&T and Verizon only provide notice of surveillance of phone lines paid for by the Senate, T-Mobile has informed my staff that it will provide notice for senators' campaign or personal lines flagged as such by the SAA. Three other carriers—Google Fi Wireless, U.S. Mobile, and Cape—have policies of notifying all customers about government demands whenever they are allowed to do so. The latter two companies adopted these policies after outreach from my office."
In a Wednesday statement announcing the letter and the above chart, Wyden's office warned that "beyond members of Congress, journalists, political activists, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and other law-abiding Americans who could be targeted by the government all have reason to be concerned about secret surveillance of their communications and location data."
The findings of his staff include details relevant to every American with a cellphone, but much of Wyden's letter is focused on improving protections for lawmakers. He pointed to "two troubling incidents" that "highlight the vulnerability of Senate communications" to foreign adversaries and U.S. law enforcement: Chinese Salt Typhoon hackers and the U.S. Department of Justice, during the first Trump administration, both collected records of lawmakers and their staff.
"Executive branch surveillance poses a significant threat to the Senate's independence and the foundational principle of separation of powers," Wyden argued. "If law enforcement officials, whether at the federal, state, or even local level, can secretly obtain senators' location data or call histories, our ability to perform our constitutional duties is severely threatened."
"This kind of unchecked surveillance can chill critical oversight activities, undermine confidential communications essential for legislative deliberations, and ultimately erode the legislative branch's co-equal status," he continued. Wyden called on senators to support his proposals for the next annual appropriations bill "that would allow the SAA to protect senators' phones and accounts—whether official, campaign, or personal—against cyber threats, just as we have for executive branch employees."
The longtime privacy advocate's letter to fellow senators was first reported by Politico, which noted that T-Mobile did not immediately respond to requests for comment while spokespeople for AT&T and Verizon defended their companies.
"We are complying with our obligations to the Senate sergeant at arms," AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers said in a statement to the outlet. "We have received no legal demands regarding Senate offices under the current contract, which began last June."
Verizon spokesperson Richard Young told Politico that "we respect the senator's view that providers should give notice to senators if we receive legal process regarding their use of their personal devices, but disagree with his policy position."
Meanwhile, Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress—an advocacy group long critical of government spying on lawmakers and warrantless surveillance—said in response to the revelations from Wyden's office that "we now know that Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other phone companies have followed AT&T's unprecedented efforts to facilitate secret government surveillance of their own customers, with some even allowing the government to secretly spy on senators."
"This is a bright, red warning sign at a time when the Trump administration keeps blowing past constitutional checks on executive power and is siccing the Justice Department on elected lawmakers," Vitka added. "These companies should be shamed and ashamed until they fix this."
Dems Accused of Caving to 'Rabid' Telecom Industry Smear Campaign Against FCC Nominee
The digital rights group Fight for the Future tweeted late Thursday that President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) promised to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules, of which Sohn was a chief architect.
"But instead they're sitting on the sidelines while Big Telecom mounts a massive dark money-funded smear campaign against their nominee to the FCC, Gigi Sohn," Fight for the Future added. "Where's the leadership? Do what you said you would do."
Fight for the Future director Evan Greer said Thursday that "it is absolutely absurd that millions of people from across the political spectrum fought for and won net neutrality at the FCC."
Ajit Pai, who chaired the FCC during the Trump administration, "repealed it, Dems promised to restore it, and they've so far failed to do so by caving to industry pressure and slow-walking" Sohn's nomination, Greer added.
"The only reason for this is corruption. Plain and simple," she charged, adding that it is a "good time to remember that Comcast, AT&T, Verizon etc. are huge donors to Democratic leadership and candidates. They've got their hands all up in there."
The campaigner also said that while the telecom sector and others--including the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)--attack Sohn, "Dem leadership is nowhere to be found defending their nominee."
Greer pointed to a piece that Scott Roberts, senior director of criminal justice campaigns for Color of Change, wrote for The Root last year, declaring that the FOP is "one of the largest and most powerful hate groups in the country" and "acts as the guardian, enforcer, and perpetuator" of "racist police culture."
The FOP has openly opposed Sohn, citing her "forceful advocacy of end-to-end encryption and 'user-only-access'" and claiming that her employment history, public policy stances, and social media activity "indicated serious animus towards law enforcement officers and the rule of law."
The FOP on Wednesday released polling it commissioned from Morning Consult, which asked U.S. registered voters various questions, including some about Sohn.
"In the poll, 65% of voters had no opinion on this nominee. But after seeing information and social media posts about her extreme positions on policing issues, 6 in 10 said they would be less likely to support the nomination," said FOP national president Patrick Yoes. "For those who say Ms. Sohn's nomination will impact their vote in the Senate's midterm elections, 60% say they are more likely to vote for a Republican candidate--which is very significant in states like Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, and Washington."
Critics framed the FOP polling as part of the ongoing efforts to tank Sohn's nomination.
"The smear campaign against [Sohn] has been beyond ridiculous," said Techdirt founder Mike Masnick. "Everyone who knows anything about her knows that it's pure nonsense, that she's beyond qualified, and that she will do an amazing job."
"The smear merchants are doing it *because* they know she'll do a good job," added Masnick, who was responding on Twitter to similar comments from technology writer Karl Bode.
Bode had tweeted of the FOP polling that "this is part of a manufactured smear campaign being run by AT&T and Comcast against a highly qualified and extremely popular FCC nominee literally everyone in the telecom/media space knows would be great on telecom monopolization, broadband affordability, and media consolidation."
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Writing for Techdirt on Friday, Bode blasted the FOP's "not-at-all-scientific poll" as well as the "grotesque campaign" by telecom giants to "spread harmful gibberish in a bid to either flip or provide flimsy justification" for right-wing Democratic senators opposing her nomination.
He also wrote:
The Biden team isn't faultless here either. It took the Biden administration nine months to even nominate Sohn, giving the telecom industry... ample time to galvanize opposition. Team Biden also hasn't done anything to defend Sohn publicly, or apply any meaningful pressure on the Senate confirmation voting process. Nor have Sohn's future FCC colleagues voiced any public support, despite the shamelessness of the attacks.
Which, in turn, is fairly reflective of how the federal government doesn't really take stuff like telecom monopolization and telecom consolidation seriously, especially in an era where "Big Tech" has sucked all the oxygen out of the D.C. policy room. And again, this is all occurring in an era when D.C. pretends to be interested in "bipartisan antitrust reform," revealing the hollowness of the gambit.
In a series of tweets Friday, Bode warned that "it is going to be an EXTREMELY long and painful decade if Democratic strategists don't start pulling their heads out of their asses and start displaying something vaguely resembling urgency, passion, and creativity."
"The phony appeal of authoritarianism can only be defeated if the [Democratic National Committee] shakes off corruption and truly represents the public interest," Bode added. "You don't accomplish this by letting a hugely popular media and telecom reformer drown under unopposed GOP/telecom propaganda attacks."
Coalition Demands AT&T Sever All Ties With Far-Right Trump Propaganda Outlet OANN
In a letter to AT&T CEO John Stankey and DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow, the coalition points to a recent report that exposed the major role AT&T--the world's largest telecom company--played in creating and funding OANN, which the media-justice group Free Press described as a "propaganda channel."
AT&T owns a 70% stake in DirecTV, which the telecom behemoth spun off earlier this year.
"OANN has the right to air whatever content it chooses," reads the letter led by Free Press and signed by 16 other groups. "However, AT&T's support for OANN runs contrary to its public commitment to equality given OANN's role in funding and promoting anti-democratic policies as well as its track record of providing a platform for disinformation and calls for acts of violence that undermine trust in our institutions."
The coalition--which includes Color of Change, Greenpeace USA, Common Cause, and Global Project Against Hate and Extremism--argues that since its inception in 2013, OANN "has provided an open platform for purveyors of disinformation to spread dangerous and hateful messages that undermine our democracy."
"OANN is a major supporter of the Stop the Steal movement and is currently being sued by Dominion for spreading election fraud lies that claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump," the letter states. "OANN has provided ongoing coverage of 'fraudulent' results and played a role in fomenting the Jan. 6 deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. OANN is continuing to run content that spreads election disinformation and seeks to cast doubt over the results of the 2020 presidential election."
The groups go on to note that OANN "has a history of featuring false information about the pandemic, which breeds distrust in public health officials and in the efficacy of the vaccine."
"In November 2020, the OANN YouTube channel featured information about a guaranteed 'cure' for Covid which YouTube flagged as violating its Covid-specific misinformation policies. YouTube suspended the OANN channel for the violation and remarked that the 'demonetization of all OANN content will be permanent, unless the network addresses its issues.'"
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Yosef Getachew, director of the Media and Democracy Program at Common Cause, said in a statement Monday that "the harmful disinformation OANN spreads has had real-world impacts on democracy and public health, from the violent insurrection on our Capitol to the death and suffering of so many who were misinformed by the network's coverage of the pandemic."
"The harmful disinformation OANN spreads has had real-world impacts on democracy and public health."
"AT&T must be held accountable for its role in building and bankrolling OANN," Getachew added, "and DirecTV must no longer carry this dangerous disinformation network."
Citing court records, Reuters reported last month that AT&T "has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue."
"Ninety percent of OAN's revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant," the outlet noted. "Without the DirecTV deal, the accountant said under oath, the network's value 'would be zero.'"
Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights at Free Press, said Monday that "AT&T helped conceive, finance, and provide a megaphone for Donald Trump's big lie."
"One America News would not exist without AT&T's money and DirecTV's national platform," said Benavidez. "It wouldn't have been able to mislead millions with dangerous, hateful, and dishonest messages that undermine our democracy and threaten our diverse communities."
"These two media giants continue to spout talking points about race equity while supporting a network that's given a national stage to white supremacists and promoted lies about public health," she added. "We're calling on AT&T CEO John Stankey and DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow to account for their hypocrisy and are urging both of their companies to cut all ties with One America News."
AT&T's Role in Creating the Far-Right Trump-Loving OAN Channel Should Surprise No One
A report linking AT&T, one of the US's most powerful telecommunications corporations, to the far-right One American News Network has been presented as a "bombshell" revelation (Daily Beast, 10/6/21; Poynter, 10/7/21; Guardian, 10/7/21) about the connection between big capital and Trumpian populism. The question is: Should it be so surprising?
Reuters (10/6/21) documented the symbiotic relationship between one of the US's most toxic far-right news outlets and its largest telecom company.
The first segment of the investigation by Reuters (10/6/21) found that "AT&T has been a crucial source of funds flowing into OAN, providing tens of millions of dollars in revenue," and that 90% of "OAN's revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms." The second segment (10/7/21) focuses on the network's founder, Robert Herring Sr.
It's a remarkable piece of investigative business journalism by John Shiffman, scrutinizing documents that might have otherwise stayed in the shadows. According to a 2019 deposition obtained by Reuters, Herring said that the idea for OAN came from AT&T executives in 2013. Herring said "they wanted a conservative network" because "they only had one, which was Fox, and they had seven others on the other side." (Reuters glosses "other side" as meaning "left-wing," a label that does not credibly apply to any of the networks carried by AT&T's DirecTV platform.)
AT&T has tried to downplay the story, saying that it does not fund the network or control it, but as Media Matters (10/6/21) noted, that early funding gave the network a head start, and "OAN would not exist were it not for AT&T's financial support and distribution." As Reuters quoted an OAN lawyer, if the network were to "not be renewed on DirecTV, the company would go out of business tomorrow."
Political hyper-extremism
OAN, along with Christopher Ruddy's Newsmax, has become synonymous with Donald Trump's nationalist wing of the Republican Party. It exhibits a political hyper-extremism that has led some of Trump's more ardent supporters to view Fox News, two decades ago the lone wolf of conservative TV news, as too liberal (CNN, 11/12/20; Washington Post, 12/27/20). This would come as a shock to viewers of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, popular Fox hosts who still carry water for the former president and his movement. The surrealism of this shift is palpable: Both networks could easily be mistaken for parodies of a dystopian future, networks that fuse the Orwellian nature of North Korean broadcasting with American kitsch.
OAN (5/8/20) makes George Soros the face of a "population control" conspiracy.
OAN has promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, Syria and much else (Daily Beast, 12/26/19). It aired a bizarre and not-too-subtly antisemitic "story linking the coronavirus to George Soros and a 'population control' plot" (CNN, 5/10/20). FAIR founder Jeff Cohen said of OAN, "I watched this channel every day in December 2020 and January, when audience spiked," through March 2021, and saw a channel "that makes Fox News sound like Democracy Now!"
Its over-the-topness has boosted the upstart's standing on the right, and gained it a sizable following, thanks in large part to promotion from Trump himself (Guardian, 6/15/19). OAN doesn't participate in Nielsen ratings, but the network claims it "pulled in its highest ratings ever in 2020," with viewership growing "by more than 40% in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter," Reuters (12/29/20) reported. The news service quoted OAN CEO Herring claiming that according to data from "a major pay TV provider in 70 markets...OAN ranked as the No. 4 national news network with those viewers."
But the Trumpier-than-thou act also lands these networks in trouble: Dominion, which makes voting systems, sued both OAN and Fox for spreading the false accusation that the company fixed the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden (CNBC, 8/10/21). Newsmax, the other major right-wing TV news network, had been part of the same lawsuit with OAN, but was dropped after it issued an apology to Dominion and admitted it had no evidence for its fraud claims (Forbes, 4/30/21).
Hardly progressive
How could a respectable firm like AT&T--a cornerstone of global commerce--end up in a gang like this? The revelations about AT&T and OAN puncture the myth that Trumpian populism, isolationism and extreme nationalism are isolated to the fringes of Red State America, somehow distinct and divorced from the traditional Republican base of corporate leaders, who are otherwise worldly and enjoy cozy relationships with politicians of both major parties.
AT&T is hardly a progressive company. For example, the Dallas Morning News (3/23/21) reported that AT&T sent "thousands of dollars through its PAC to Republican groups with ties to members of Congress who objected to certifying President Joe Biden's victory on January 6," even though the company had said "it would no longer contribute to those members in the days after the Capitol riot." Pro-choice activists blasted the company "for backing Texas lawmakers who sponsored the new state law that effectively outlaws abortion after six weeks" (CNBC, 10/4/21).
As a corporation, AT&T has a keen interest in tax cuts (Guardian, 3/30/21) and deregulation--priorities that mesh well with the politics pushed by far-right outlets like OAN.
Like most smart capitalist firms, AT&T gives money to both Democrats and Republicans, but has a clear preference: According to Open Secrets, in the 2020 election cycle, the company's PACs gave $165,000 to Republican Party committees, and only $60,000 to Democratic committees.
The Communications Workers of America has complained that company downsizing resulted in a reduction in wages (Fierce Wireless, 4/26/21). The Guardian (3/30/21) reported that AT&T showed "keen support for a major corporate tax cut under Donald Trump," arguing that it would spur job growth, but this year "announced permanent closures of hundreds of retail stores around the US and laid off thousands of workers."
Like most telecom firms, the company is hostile toward regulation, as it "lied about California's net neutrality law...when it claimed the law requires AT&T to stop providing 'free data' to mobile customers" (Ars Technica, 3/18/21). The American Civil Liberties Union (7/9/21) added that AT&T's privileging DirecTV for its cellular customers "is almost a pure textbook example of why net neutrality rules were put into place."
Not only had the telecom giant been a huge backer of the campaign to end the FCC's net neutrality policy, but New York state investigators found that the company was a part of a coalition that "acted to give" Trump FCC chair Ajit Pai "'cover' to repeal the broadband regulations" (New York Times, 5/6/21). AT&T "funded an effort that yielded millions of fake comments supporting" the end of net neutrality, the Times reported, adding that "about 18 million of the 22 million comments sent to the FCC during the debate over the net neutrality rules were fake, the investigation found."
Political cynicism
Is it so shocking that a communications company with such a track record of political cynicism would grab an opportunity to get a slice of the ascendant far-right media pie? The revelations counter a well-manicured image that Trump-aligned media and his loyalists in Congress are somehow anti-establishment, a voice of the regular American rather than of the commercial elite (FAIR.org, 2/16/21).
This image doesn't hold up to scrutiny. For example, Christopher Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, holds a graduate degree from the London School of Economics, and has served as a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution--not exactly the resume of a provincial anti-globalist. His network (8/31/21) has pushed mainstream corporate conservative media lines against labor unions.
The Federalist was founded by Ben Domenech, who despite positioning the outlet as an enemy of the Washington swamp (6/9/21) is married to Meghan McCain, the daughter of Trump-loathing late Sen. John McCain, herself a former host of the popular mainstream show The View (Variety, 9/26/21).
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the parent company of the Daily Mail--a tabloid (10/28/20) that has painted Brexit as a British partner to Trumpism in a popular rebellion against the global establishment--is controlled by Jonathan Harmsworth, aka the 4th Viscount Rothermere, a literal aristocrat (Guardian, 12/18/16).
So-called right-wing populism is often cloaked in the image of anti-corporate rage--take the ongoing campaign of Sen. Josh Hawley (Stanford '02, Yale Law '06) against Silicon Valley, which paints tech giants as unrestrained enforcers of cultural liberalism (Washington Post, 8/29/19). But Trump loyalists in Congress and in the media share a common bond with traditional and mainstream conservatives and the business class. They all want to lower taxes, reduce regulations on business and curtail the power of organized labor.
AT&T saw something worthwhile in OAN, and can certainly tolerate a bit of right-wing quackery if it means having another media avenue to fight a class war against any kind of progressive economic and regulatory agenda.
AT&T CEO John Stankey Urged to Sever Ties With Far-Right OAN--Or Step Down
UltraViolet's ultimatum for John Stankey, CEO of world's largest communications company, came after Reuters reported that "90% of OAN's revenue came from a contract with AT&T-owned television platforms, including satellite broadcaster DirecTV, according to 2020 sworn testimony by an OAN accountant."
In a statement, Sonja Spoo, director of reproductive rights campaigns at UltraViolet, noted revelations about not only the news network but also AT&T's support for Texas lawmakers who sponsored a recently enacted abortion ban that's provoked national alarm.
"The leadership and tenure of now CEO and former COO John Stankey at AT&T is marked by his enabling of the radical, right-wing conspiracy platform One America News and the funding for anti-choice politicians behind Texas' dangerous abortion ban," she said.
Referencing the lies and conspiracy theories circulated by the news network, Spoo said that "this shameful legacy ties AT&T to the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, the spread of fatal Covid-19 misinformation, and new laws in Texas that undermine the right to vote and obstruct access to abortion care."
"If John Stankey is unwilling to correct this course by severing ties with OAN, firing anti-abortion extremist Ed Gillespie, and pledging to stop funding right-wing, racist, and anti-woman politicians," Spoo declared, "he should step down."
Gillespie joined AT&T last year as senior executive vice president of external and legislative affairs after a longtime consulting relationship with the company. Previously, he chaired the Republican National Committee and served as counselor to former President George W. Bush during his second term.
While AT&T has pushed back against the reporting, with spokesperson Jim Greer telling The Hill that "AT&T has never had a financial interest in OAN's success and does not 'fund' OAN," criticism of the company has piled up since the reporting broke Wednesday.
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"We are outraged to learn that AT&T has been funneling tens of millions of dollars into OAN since the network's inception," said NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson in a statement. "AT&T has as a result caused irreparable damage to our democracy. The press should inform the American public with facts, not far-right propaganda and conspiracy theories."
Johnson highlighted that Stankey has written that "our corporate value to Stand for Equality has never been more relevant, not only inside AT&T but outside, as well. It is a business imperative to champion equality, diversity, and inclusion in every aspect of our business."
The NAACP leader asserted that "for a corporation that fuels OAN, a network that continues to spread lies about the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection, AT&T's values could not be any more performative and flat-out fake. We are sickened by these revelations."
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