Charter Watcher

We won!

As of yesterday Charter has suspended their illegal wiretapping program with NebuAD over privacy concerns. Reuters has the story here. The fight isn’t over though, because companies like Charter never stop looking for ways to make money (which is understandable), and sometimes those methods stomp all over you and I.

From the article:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. cable television operator Charter Communications is suspending a program that would offer advertisers ways to target pitches at people based on what they search for on the Internet.

“As we do with all new service launches or initiatives, we conducted focus groups well in advance, which told us that most broadband consumers would look upon this service favorably,” Charter said on Wednesday.

“However, some of our customers have presented questions about this service as well as suggested improvements,” it said. “We will continue to take a thoughtful, deliberate approach with the goal to ultimately structure an advertising service that enhances the Internet experience for our customers and addresses questions and concern they’ve raised.”

How about that doublespeak, eh? Allow me to translate: “We thought that if we misled a bunch of specifically-chosen non-technical people in a focus group and got them to go along with the program, that we could just tout those results and slip it in without anyone noticing. Unfortunately we didn’t count on the massive customer and privacy group backlash, so we’re canning the program until we can find a more clever way to put it in without your noticing.”

Note that they’re not completely nixing the program, just suspending it. That means that it’ll be back, and with a company other than NebuAD. My guess is that since NebuAD just got outed as Gator 2.0, Charter is cutting and running until they can find someone else. And next time you can bet your bottom dollar that they won’t send out subscriber notifications or dispatch Ted Schremp to spread misinformation about the program.

I read an article yesterday about Allot communications, a company that makes deep packet inspection systems for ISP’s and NebuAD-type companies. As you may recall, one of NebuAD’s employees is a former senior engineer for that company. Since the DPI hardware is being manufactured by a company other than NebuAD, Charter will find it easy to pick up a new advertising provider using the same technology.

I’ll bet that Charter just moves everything in-house, which will eliminate the majority of the legal questions that have been raised in the last few months. Why use NebuAD when you can just buy a couple of Allot boxes and do it yourself?

No matter how you look at it, though, this is good news. We’ve won! Our privacy is safe for another day, and Charter has been made to eat a loss on this program.

To everyone who contacted me, and especially to everyone who contacted Charter, their representatives, and oversight bodies, thank you.

More coverage can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Charter lies about a lot more than just privacy

A couple of months ago I saw a commercial for Charter Communications which featured a man in a suit sitting at a computer talking about fiber optics. He explained that Verizon was getting a lot of publicity of their FIOS service, but maintained that Charter had been using fiber optics for years, insinuating that the services were equal in terms of speed and reliability. Then he pretended to type. Not only can Charter not hire competent executives or managers, but they can’t even get an actor to type convincingly on cue.

It bothered me even then that Charter would lie so boldly. Of course they use fiber optics in their network, as does virtually every company with more than a half dozen servers. Heck, my third bedroom has some fiber in play for my personal servers, and I’ve been using fiber to connect my music hardware for almost a decade. Does that put my technology on par with Charter’s? With Verizon’s? Since I use fiber too, can I now go on television and promise to deliver the exact same thing that these companies do?

Of course the answer is no, but that doesn’t stop Charter from comparing their decades-old cable technology to Verizon’s cutting-edge FIOS. It’s so blatant that even Forbes did a piece on it.

From the article:

Mike Weaver in Watauga, Texas, saw an ad from Charter Communications Inc. that talked about “advanced fiber optics,” and was disappointed when he realized that the cable company isn’t drawing fiber to the home. He wants the faster Internet speeds provided by FiOS, he said.

Charter spokeswoman Anita Lamont said the intent behind the current ads, which say the company has been using fiber for the last 10 years, “is to reassure current Charter customers that they too have fiber optic technology bringing their homes to life.”

Mike saw the same commercial I saw. In it Charter obviously compares their fiber optic network to Verizon’s, which indicates that Charter too offers fiber to the doorstep. According to Anita Lamont, this commercial is intended to do just that. Charter knows that the vast majority of customers won’t know that the fiber optic being touted in their commercials only refers to that in use in their datacenters. Charter knows that the majority of their customers won’t call them on their BS when they see a plain old coaxial cable strung across their backyard. Charter thinks that they can lie with impunity, and that no one will do anything about it. That is how much they think of you and I as customers.

So why is it surprising when they employ the same techniques in dealing with privacy? Charter’s standard procedure is to lie, bend the truth, and spread misinformation. We all know that they don’t have the same fiber optic network as Verizon, and we all know that they won’t protect our privacy.

But that isn’t going to stop them from lying through their teeth about it. There’s money to be made, and the truth is the only thing left standing in the way. Somebody call Ted Schremp. There’s BS that needs to be spread.

Some background on NebuAD

Robb Topolski, author of the highly recommended and incredibly technical privacy report on NebuAD’s methods, made a comment on this site yesterday about NebuAD employees, asking if I would look into the rumor that some of them had previously worked for Gator, the notorious spyware company. At first I dismissed the rumor as just that; negative speculation is not hard to find around companies who are engaged in repugnant behavior.

Robb’s concern stayed with me though, so last night I started digging up whatever I could find on the matter. It seems that Robb was quite right. There are some very deep links between NebuAD and Gator, along with other spyware/tracking companies. I will update this list as more information is uncovered. I’ve done everything in my power to verify everything listed, but I cannot claim that all of this information is completely factual. It’s just tough to trust the Internet sometimes. Also, if you have anything to add to this list, please contact me here.

• Scott Tavenner, NebuAD’s vice president of business development, held the title of director of business development at Gator/Claria.
• Paul Goad, NebuAD’s managing director for the UK, founded Tacoda, a behavioral advertising company. Visiting Tacoda’s website, it becomes immediately clear that they and NebuAD hired the same web developer. What is it about companies doing things no one would ever be proud to do advertising that fact by presenting as little information and navigation as possible on their websites?
• Mike Miller is NebuAD’s vice president of advertising sales, and also a former Gator. While there he held the title of director of sales.
• Here’s one that’s a little different. Lebin Chang, the VP of Engineering and Infrastructure Products for NebuAD, previously worked for McAfee on a team managing intrusion detection software. I suppose if part of your business is gaining questionable access to the machines of your users using methods most commonly associated with scammers and spammers, you need a good security guy to keep you from getting caught.
• Chuck Gilbert, a senior product manager at NebuAD is also a former Gator guy. He may not be important enough at NebuAD to get his own page, but around here he’s a rock star.
• Amy Auranicky is a director of sales at nebuAD. That’s quite a step up from her position as integration manager at Claria.
• Jeanne Houweling is the vice president of advertising services at NebuAD. She was previously employed as the senior director of business development at Claria.
• Kevin Wilk, the Vice President of West Sales at NebuAD was a Business Development Manager at Eyeblaster, another monitoring/tracking/spyware company.
• Len Munday is the European Technical Director for NebuAD. He once held the position of Senior System Engineer at Allot Communications, a company which specializes in deep packet inspection solutions.

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 5 confirmed Gator/Claria connections, 2 connections to other spyware companies, a security guy, and a deep packet inspection guru thus far.

Are these the people we really want running a network which has unfettered access to the most intimate aspects of our lives? Even if what they were doing was legal, which is isn’t, do these seem like the best people with whom to team up?

Update 6/24: Several articles have been published recently about NebuAD’s association with Gator. The L.A. Times points out at least 5 former Gator employees at NebuAD. The Register echoes that number. Crunchgear has it too. The list goes on and on.

How Charter and NebuAD are violating the U.S. Constitution

Every American has heard of the concept we call “Freedom of Speech.” It is specifically listed in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment actually covers five specific freedoms, those being:

1. The freedom of religion
2. Freedom of speech
3. Freedom of the press
4. Freedom of assembly
5. Freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances

All five of these are important because they lay the groundwork for all of our other freedoms. Without the right to speak our minds there is no debate. Without the right to gather together to address issues nothing can be changed. The Supreme Court has also repeatedly upheld another “freedom” not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, the “freedom of association.”

Freedom of association is mandatory to the function of free speech because in many cases people can only exercise their freedom of speech when in groups or otherwise associating with others. It is similar to the freedom of assembly, but different in that “freedom of association” does not necessarily require individuals to actually meet physically or even gather to discuss a matter. When you order a book from Amazon.com you are exercising your freedom of association with the seller of the product you buy. When you consult WebMD you are associating yourself with the people who run the site. When you chat online you are associating with those other individuals interested in a shared topic.

You and I have a right to conduct ourselves however we want online, and we have a basic right to privacy in the process. Our associations are our own, and any negative repercussions stemming from those associations are in violation of our Constitution and human rights.

We all live in the real world, though, and we all know that our associations can be a cause for concern to many people. Some companies won’t hire individuals who have known medical conditions. Government agencies might be interested in people who seek out information on corruption and civil rights infractions. Prosecutors regularly submit search terms and emails as evidence in everything from fraud to murder cases. Our associations online are of great interest to many people and organizations, and if monitored or recorded are of even greater interest.

It is the responsibility of the federal government, and of companies operating in the United States, to protect our freedom, especially those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, without which no freedom is possible. For a company like Charter to take active steps to the contrary which will clearly make it easier for our associations to become public knowledge is not only a violation of the public trust, but also flies in the face of the basic human right to free speech and the enumerated right to such in the First Amendment.

A recent study in Germany found that retention laws and monitoring in that country changed the behavior of its citizens in more than 50% of respondents. More than half of the people questioned said that “they probably would not use telecommunication for contacts like drug counselors, psychotherapists or marriage counselors because of data retention.” People are the same around the world. If a person knows they’re being watched, then they’ll change their behavior so as not to raise any degree of suspicion, even if their business is legitimate. For Charter users that means that we may not visit a chatroom about suicide prevention or abortion. We might not order Ron Paul’s new book because its title “The Revolution: A Manifesto” might send the wrong message. We won’t conduct banking or brokerage transactions online. We might not even send pictures of our kids to the grandparents.

And we would have good reason not to do any of those things. Our future may be affected by our associations, despite those associations being Constitutionally protected.

This chilling effect is what the First Amendment specifically protects us against. We have a right to call our doctor when we need help without worrying about losing our job or our insurance if our condition becomes public knowledge. We have a right to chat about topics which might be cause for alarm to people with alternate beliefs. We have the right to order and read any material we want without fear of that transaction being turned over to any individual, company, or oversight body. We have the right to freely associate ourselves with whatever and whoever we like, and Charter has teamed up with NebuAD to absolutely trample on this right.

I have been very reluctant to carry out some actions that I might have prior to learning about Charter’s new wiretapping program. There are websites I won’t visit anymore, people I won’t email without strong encryption anymore, and even books I will never order as long as my packets are being read while in transit. In a very real and very tangible way Charter has already committed a civil rights violation against me and indeed against every one of its customers, and at some point in the future they will be made to stand accountable for that.

You either stand for the rights and freedoms that we as Americans enjoy, or you don’t. Charter and NebuAD most obviously don’t, so today I’d like to introduce another word to the debate over their spying program:

Unamerican.

Ted Schremp gets a promotion!

Businesswire has an article about our friend and general douchebag Ted Schremp. It seems that Charter absolutely loves the way he outright lies to journalists, as he has now been promoted to chief marketing officer. From his new post he’ll be able to continue to spread BS about the new wiretapping program, as well as lead his entire company into delusional fairytale land, where every opportunity to make a buck just has to be good for the customer because it’s good for Charter.

This is a warning sign for all Charter customers and shareholders. Ted Schremp is willing to say and do anything for corporate profits, including helping his company violate federal laws and Constitutional rights enjoyed by all Americans.

One has to wonder what it takes to fill the shoes of a man like Ted Schremp. How low does one’s moral character have to sink? How technologically incompetent does one have to be? How willing to shit all over your own customers must you be to take over a job once held by a man like Ted Schremp?

From the article:

“I look forward to stepping into this important position at Charter,” said Mr. Schremp, who most recently served as the Company’s Senior Vice President of Product Management and Strategy. “Bob has developed a solid strategy targeting continued growth, and I look forward to assuming leadership for this key area of the business.”

Let’s break this down. Charter’s “solid strategy targeting continued growth” involves illegally wiretapping our Internet connections and selling our lives to advertising companies. Ted Schremp is a moron who claims that the system doesn’t use the core technology on which the entire program is built, but he’s somehow going to assume “leadership for this key area of business.”

If I owned stock in Charter (NASDAQ: CHTR) I’d be bailing like hell right now.

NebuAD is as bad as we thought

It seems like everyone has a recent article on NebuAD’s technology, which was once thought to be simple deep packet inspection only. As it turns out, NebuAD is actually conducting browser hijacks and modifying packets. The legality of this kind of thing isn’t really questionable. NebuAD is actively engaged in criminal activity.

From the article at eWeek:

According to a new technical report (PDF) by Free Press and Public Knowledge, NebuAd uses special equipment that “monitors, intercepts and modifies the contents of Internet packets” as consumers go online. The report found that NebuAd inserts extra hidden code into users’ Web browsers that was not sent by the Web site being visited.

In turn, the code directs the browser to another site not requested or even seen by the consumer, where more hidden code is downloaded and executed to add more tracking cookies. Using the secretly collected information, NebuAd serves up ads based on the user’s browsing habits.

There have been concerns that NebuAD might modify packets or inject script. This comes on the heels of a report last week showing how a company providing the same kind of wiretapping in England is actually crashing people’s browsers. I wonder what the penalties are for modifying copyrighted content, spying illegally on users, then crashing a user’s browser. I guess it’ll all depend on how much cash Charter brings to the upcoming hearings.

What interests me even more about this revelation is that it completely negates NebuAD’s previous statements on anonymity. Even if Charter is handing NebuAD completely anonymous lumps of raw data, stripped of sensitive subjects and identifiable information, NebuAD can just use this data to redirect you to one of their sites in order to load your browser up full of additional tracking software not hindered by Charter’s anonymity attempts. With a few tracking cookies and a bit of javascript now and again NebuAD could conceivably build a personal dossier on every Charter customer, complete with names, emails, association, interests, and lifestyle choices.

From the article at Wired:

NebuAd has conceded that its boxes peer deep into internet packets to pull out URLs and search terms in order to classify each user’s interests. That profile is then used deliver tailored ads on various partner websites.

Wait a minute. Didn’t Charter’s Ted Schremp, senior vice president of product management and strategy, definitively say that this system did not use deep packet inspection? Why yes, he did, in an interview with CNET here. The exact quote, in fact, was:

“The enhanced advertising solution does not utilize deep packet inspection. It looks at URL level information only. That’s another point of misinformation on the Net.”

Misinformation? I guess you would know better than anyone else about that, Mr. Schremp. The only thing customers can be 100% sure about is the unending stream of complete and utter BS coming out of both Charter and NebuAD. Misinformation exists because it has been used as a tool by both of these companies to obfuscate the true nature of the technology being employed. Slowly but surely, however, the truth is coming out. And it’s not pretty, especially for NebuAD. They’ve been counting on their program running quietly behind the scenes and under the radar.

From the article at MediaPost:

NebuAd said in a statement Wednesday that it was “disappointed with the misleading characterization” of its company in the report. NebuAd stated that its technology is no different from that of other ad networks. “Similar to most ad networks, we place cookies on users’ machines … All ad networks use a small piece of code that is temporary and operates only within the security framework of the browser to invoke the placement of ad network cookies. The code NebuAd uses is no different, and is clearly demarcated outside of and does not modify any publisher code.”

These people are delusional. Their technology is “no different from that of other ad networks”?! Maybe the fact that their advertising is based on a constant stream of my personal information passing through their system makes it different. Maybe their access to each and every packet which comes or goes from my house makes it different. Maybe their injecting javascript and redirects into sites owned by other people makes it different. Maybe the fact that they refuse to disclose their technology makes it different. Maybe their lack of patents makes it different. Maybe the fact that it is nowhere near “anonymous” makes it different.

Sure, NebuAD uses a cookie just like every other advertising company out there, but there’s a lot more than just a cookie in play here. There are evil men (and women) working hard to profit from the personal lives of you and I. They’re willing to spy on us, wiretap us, and monitor our every communication to make a buck, and in the end the only thing we can be completely sure that we’re getting out of the deal is crashed browsers, stolen identities, broken websites, and violations of our right to free association.

Exactly what do we have to do to stop companies like NebuAD from spreading such terrible practices into the world? It really makes you wonder how some of these people live with themselves.

Confirmed: Charter is listening

Mediapost has an article this morning that showed up in Google Finance about Charter’s delay in selling our personal information to NebuAD. It seems like concerns over privacy may be partly to blame, but a quote from a Charter rep is the most telling part of this story.

From the article:

A Charter spokesperson attributed the delay to technology issues. “It will happen when we’re technologically ready,” the spokesperson told Online Media Daily.

This doesn’t surprise me either. As I’ve talked about before, Charter doesn’t have the slightest clue how this is going to work. Charter customers will tell you how bad their network is in general, with outages being far too common and complete hackery on the part of techs and admins being par for the course. Let’s not forget the thousands of email accounts which had all of their data erased back in January. This is what makes Charter’s wiretapping program so terrible. These people can hardly keep their own subscribers online and functional, and yet they want to dedicate their resources to something which, if done poorly, will have vast privacy implications to more than three million Americans. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if Charter does this, it will in fact be done poorly.

If you’re a Charter stockholder you might want to start getting concerned now too. Not only will this program likely lead to a pretty significant drop in subscribers, it will eventually give way to some horribly huge lawsuits. Imagine how many zeros are going to be in the checks paid out to people who have reporters knock on their doors based on information being captured by Charter. It happened to AOL with their “anonymous” customer information, and there’s a 100% chance that Charter will leak private data at some point through this program. Meanwhile Charter is just barely rebounding from having been delisted from Nasdaq, and when this program blows up in their face I’m sure their stock will once again crumble.

It’s good to see that Google Finance is picking up on the story, and I expect to see more financial publications taking it on as details unfold. Anytime a company is making decisions which severely threaten the financial well being of not only the company, but that of every customer which the company serves, it’s a safe bet that the market folks will take an interest.

Charter starts to feel the heat

An article in the East Oregonian discusses Charter’s plans to begin wiretapping its customers, and explains why Charter has yet to flip the on switch just yet. After posting up several articles where Charter vice president Ted Schremp contradicts himself in explaining the technology, and further learning that NebuAD’s hardware doesn’t even function according to their own patents, I somehow believed that they weren’t starting yet due to sheer incompetence. Apparently they’ve gotten past the fact that they themselves have no clue how the technology works and can’t coherently explain it to the public though. Their holdup isn’t technical though, you see; it’s legal.

From the article:

Charter’s proposal, however, caught the attention of two U.S. House members. Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Edward J. Markey and Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton sent a letter expressing serious concerns about the plan to Charter President and Chief Executive Officer Neil Smit.

Markey is the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet and Barton is a ranking member on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

The lawmakers told Smit Charter’s plan to collect information about its customers’ Web-related habits without their prior consent “raises substantial questions related to Section 631″ of the federal Communications Act.

Charter spokeswoman Anita Lamont said Smit and the two lawmakers and their staff held a “low key” meeting this week. She said Charter hasn’t decided anything for certain and hasn’t moved forward with its plan to pilot the program this month.

I like the idea of a “low key” meeting which halts the progress of completely illegal and anti-customer programs. Congressional hearings are coming up very soon, and I expect to hear some of the things Markey and Barton said behind closed doors aired in public.

A few of the things Congress needs to address are:

• Why doesn’t this program require an opt-in as opposed to an opt-out?
• If the law requires all “enhancements” which collect data to benefit the customer, do Charter’s outright lies about this program being beneficial fall under illegal and/or misleading statements?
• What about the “chilling effect” with this program? If a person who knows they’re being monitored does not feel comfortable alerting their psychiatrist on a tapped telephone or Internet connection and later goes on to kill twenty people, does the company which instituted the monitoring bear some liability?
• Charter and NebuAD have been using very different language in explaining this program in several different ways. Congress needs to get clearly-understandable technical documentation on this program in the hands of the public.
• What is NebuAD’s legal responsibility with data purchased from Charter? They’ve expressed intent to sell it to other companies, for instance. Can they really do that?
• What are the legal ramifications for Charter if and when this data is made available to the public? We all know it’s only a matter of time before anyone who wants it will have access to several gigs of Charter customer click stream. What happens then?
• Does this program have any future intentions, such as detecting copyright infringement or supplying warrantless data on civilians to the U.S. Government?

The good news is that Charter’s program has been halted, presumably by the efforts of Markey and Barton. I’m sure they’ll send a couple of slick executives with trunks loaded with stacks of cash to ensure that Congress sees things their way. Maybe we’ll get lucky though, and Charter will suffer a setback that isn’t predicated on their being run by the best team of retarded monkeys ever to run a communications company into the ground.

How Charter and the federal government monitor you

I had the most interesting conversation with a Charter employee on Thursday. A couple of weeks ago I was speaking with Carla Conner, who is Charter’s customer care advocate for government issues. After explaining my concerns, a task made difficult by her lack of technical background, I asked to be escalated to her boss. Several weeks and a half-dozen phone calls later, I finally got a telephone call from a fellow named Michael Perisho, whose title I do not yet know.

I told Mike how Charter’s program would be invasive to privacy, that there were concerns with information being sold to third party advertising companies, that customers would be chilled from using their Internet access to conduct sensitive business knowing that they were monitored, that Charter’s misleading speech on the program was abusive to the public trust, and that American citizens had a right to be free from monitoring without a court order. What he said next absolutely floored me.

Charter Communications, and all other ISP’s, have monitoring hardware supplied by the United States federal government which maintains a records of what sites a customer visits. He explained in detail how smaller ISP’s which may not have the money to implement the technology themselves get it done for them by the government. He went on to explain that certain websites and material gets flagged and automatically turned over to the feds, which I assume is done without a warrant. He then went a step further, describing how at times the government will visit some specific and targeted web sites with an unknown IP address to check up on Charter to ensure that the system works, fining those ISPs which do not capture or report the traffic.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Our founding fathers could not possibly have envisioned the rise of the Internet. They had no concept of an ISP. They did, however, account for every shred of personal property a person could own in their time. Their person, houses, papers, effects; one can surely categorize one’s own email inbox, bookmarks, and surfing habits as being among one’s personal papers or effects. The obvious conclusion is that a government organization attempting to gather data on an Internet user must have a warrant, if we’re to believe that the Constitution has any standing. The question is, when Charter and other ISP’s are installing their data retention hardware and colluding with the federal government to monitor your traffic, are they doing so in a manner which is consistent with United States law? If so, is the law which grants them access to such information consistent with the Constitution? Finally, why would Michael Perisho, when confronted with a broad line of questioning regarding Charter’s new advertising program, choose to start discussing Charter’s government-mandated monitoring instead?

Charter’s intention to pair up with NebuAD to monitor customers for the purposes of increasing advertising revenue is a major violation of both personal and consumer privacy. Charter’s collusion with the federal government to turn over information about a customer based on their surfing habits is unconstitutional, going completely against of one of our most basic freedoms. I can sort of see how Michael could get the two mixed up. They’re both really nasty, and both likely to eventually result in testimony before Congress.

What really bothers me is the future implications of these programs existing within the same network infrastructure. If Charter somehow gets the legal go-ahead with this deep packet inspection program, what’s to stop NebuAD’s unpatented, unexplained, untested hardware appliance from directing every blob with your MAC, IP, and raw packet to another database before creating their “anonymous” profiles? We’re talking about a literal recreation of your entire browsing history. If Charter and the federal government are already involved in red-flagging people for the feds, what’s to stop them from using the already-available DPI data mined for free by NebuAD to improve their hit rate?

Charter is currently only alerting the government when people visit certain websites. Soon they might be capable of alerting the feds when you string certain words together across a series of emails. They’ll also be able to turn over a complete reproduction of your clickstream to back it up. They’ll do this automatically, based on the keywords you type, the websites you visit, or the content of any emails you send or receive. Maybe they’ll have warrants, maybe they won’t.

But you’re not supposed to care. You’re next in line to get Charter’s “enhanced service,” which will help you keep up with the latest fashion by providing you with an endless stream of enhanced advertising directed to your personal interests. Ted Schremp, your personal guide to the world of better ads, is here to help!

NPR gets it totally wrong

NPR posted an absolutely terrible article on Charter’s wiretapping program today. Cyrus Farivar spends most of the piece drawing stupid comparisons to Google and Facebook, dedicating nary a word to Congressional interest and legal aspects of the topic. I guess maybe I just expect more out of NPR, but even the audio accompanying the story is bad. If anyone from NPR is reading this, you can contact me here when you’d like a coherent and thorough report on this case.

From the article:

[F]our years ago, when Google launched its free Web-based Gmail, a lot of people were concerned that Google would be scanning private e-mails to allow targeted ads. Today, most people don’t seem to mind so much and continue to use it. Just like Gmail, Blum says, some customers might not mind the more targeted ads.

Let me explain this again for Mr. Farivar and Mr. Blum:

What Google does is legal because the data they collect does not leave the company. Gmail users do not have their information sold to an advertising company because Google itself is the advertising company. As long as Google is competent enough to protect the data used to generate the advertising, which most reasonable people believe Google to be, then the privacy concern in their case is not as significant. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, and I’m not suggesting that what Google does is right (because it isn’t), but at least what Google does is legal, as it isn’t predicated on user data being sent into the wild.

Charter, on the other hand, is breaking several federal laws. As an ISP they are held to regulations which disallow them from collecting data from their customers outside of that which is legally mandated. There is very little comparison to be drawn between the program put forth by Charter and NebuAD and that run by Google.

Charter would not go on the record to discuss its upcoming ad program, but the company already makes it possible for customers to opt out.

Do they now? Perhaps the dozens of articles to the contrary should have been consulted prior to your submitting a report to NPR on the matter, Mr. Farivar.

At its core, Charter’s initiaive is about money, says Chris Hoofnagle, a privacy law expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

“ISPs have to find a way to become profitable,” says Hoofnagle. “And they need to find ways to generate revenue on top of merely connecting people to the Internet.”

I don’t think anyone has any problem with Charter finding new ways to make money. That’s what companies are supposed to do. Nobody is ever going to speak negatively of Charter for exploring new ways to make money, except when those ways stomp all over the very people responsible for their current income. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. Wait, no, it’s selling Peter’s personal information to a bunch of people on the Internet so that they can steal Peter’s identity for fun and for profit, from which you will receive a kickback which you then use to pay Paul. Or better yet, just forget Paul and give Ted Schremp a bigger bonus!

Indeed, a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission states that Charter is $20 billion in debt, has lost billions of dollars over the last three years, and adds that the company expects “to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future.”

I wasn’t aware of that. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.