Sometime this week your elected Senators will vote on the much revised FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) legislation that will exonerate your cell phone companies from any wrong-doing for illegally spying on YOU.  The FISA legislation will essentially legalize the warrantless wiretapping that Bush and Cheney have come to depend on in their quest to strip you of all of your constitutional rights.

As Mr. Galloway says in the accompanying article, they want you to live in fear forever, and you are letting that happen by your inaction.  Call or write to your Senator TODAY and ask them to stop this madness.

How Dare They Rip The Fourth Amendment?

Posted July 5, 2008 | 05:28 PM (EST)

Early next week the U.S. Senate will vote on an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with a few small amendments intended to immunize telecommunications corporations that assisted our government in the warrantless and illegal wiretapping it has grown to love.

That such a gutting of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution even made it out of committee is yet another stain on the gutless and seemingly powerless Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.

That a majority on both sides of the aisle — not least of them the presumptive nominees for president of both political parties — intend to vote for such a violation of Americans’ right to privacy and of the sanctity of their personal communications is a stunning surrender to those who want us to live in fear forever.

We are living in a time when the right of habeas corpus — which simply put is your right to be brought before a proper court of law where the government is made to prove that there is good and legal reason to detain you — recently survived by a margin of only one vote at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now these bad actors are prepared to set aside your right to privacy — written into the Constitution as a key part of our Bill of Rights — with hardly a nod in the direction of the true patriots who rebelled against an English king and his army to guarantee those rights.

That they will do this while the last empty phrases of the political windbags at the Fourth of July celebrations are still echoing across a thousand city parks and the bright red, white and blue bunting and blizzard of American flags still flap in the breeze is little short of breath-taking.

How dare they?

Those denizens of the White House and Capitol Hill and all those gray granite buildings that line avenues with names like Constitution and Independence in the nation’s capitol would have us believe that we must trade our rights, all of our rights, for some measure of security from the terrorists.

They would have us believe that a nation of 300 million people must surrender what a million other Americans gave their lives in war to protect in order to protect us from a couple of hundred fanatics hiding in caves in Waziristan.

Benjamin Franklin himself wrote of such a debate:

"Those who can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

The fact that British troops, operating on flimsy general warrants handed out by local magistrates, were kicking in the doors of ordinary Americans and rifling through their pantries and papers in search of smuggled, untaxed goods was a prime reason why our ancestors rebelled against their king and went to war.

This is WHY we celebrate the Fourth of July. This is why the vote on renewing the expanded version of FISA and whitewashing the egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment for seven long years by our government is important.

If neither John McCain, the Republican, or Barrack Obama, the Democrat, can find the courage to oppose such a violation of so basic a right, then what are we to do for a president, a successor to George W. Bush, The Decider, who has since 9/11 decided what rights you are entitled to keep, what laws he will or will not obey, and whether you will be protected by these words of the Constitution:

"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."

That’s it. That’s the Fourth Amendment. That is what these folks in Washington, D.C., have violated continuously and in secret for seven long years.

Somewhere across an ocean and a desert, hiding in his cave, a man of hate named Osama bin Laden is laughing up the sleeve of his dirty robe at the thought that he and a small handful of fellow fanatics could tie a great nation in knots — knots of fear stoked by our own leaders.

We have done incalculably more and greater damage to ourselves since September 11, 2001, than a thousand bin Ladens and ten thousand al Qaida recruits could ever have done to us.

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously declared that "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Now it would seem that we have no one to fear but ourselves and our leaders.

The questions I pose are these:

How can even one senator on either side of the aisle in good conscience vote in favor of this law that does nothing to enhance our security and everything to diminish our rights as a free people?

How can both men who seek to become our next president cast such a vote when both should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder declaring that they would govern by our consent and with our approval, not by wielding the coercive and corrosive and corrupt powers that King George III and his latter-day namesake from Texas thought are theirs by divine right?

This post was originally published by McClatchy Newspapers

[Thanks, Huffington Post]

My brother-in-law Will (lovely man, great father, green to the gills), has documented a recent Verizon customer service issue that caused is mother Grace (lovely woman, cool mother, lives in Jersey) to cancel her newly installed Verizon DSL account due to speeds LOWER than 56kps. I didn’t make a typo there, modem-like speeds at DLS-like prices.

His Blog documents the errors on the part of Verizon and lays out a guide for Customer Service Don’t-Do-It-This-Way. Verizon is currently $79.00 in early termination fees the richer for the experience but potentially out 13 or more cell phone contracts. All of our family uses Verizon, but to be honest, in today’s market it could just as well be any other phone company. My cell phone bill averages $99.00 a month and over a year that is a nice chunk of change. Multiply that by 13….. Hmmmm, much bigger number than 79.

I’ll tease you with a paragraph or two of Will’s post and leave you with the link.

Verizon: A Case Study in Bad Customer Service

My mom moved about a month ago, and signed up with Verizon DSL in her new house. I first learned she was having problems with her Internet service when I emailed her a movie I made on JumpCut, and she wasn’t able to view it. It turns out that Verizon gave her a DSL line that had less than 56kbps speeds. Yes, that’s right – Verizon was charging her DSL prices for less than dialup speeds.

• Verizon Mistake #1: If you aren’t providing the product or service you promised, don’t charge the customer. Verizon certainly could have monitored the quality of the connection and measured the transmission rate and determined that they were never delivering on the promised broadband connectivity. Therefore, they shouldn’t have charged for it. This wasn’t merely a case of "results may vary" – Verizon agreed that the speeds were excessively slow.

After several frustrating customer service calls with Verizon trying to resolve the speed issue (including one marathon session that went on for several hours), she gave up, and decided to get a broadband cable modem instead.

More after the jump.

[Thanks, Will]

A quick search of “iPhone” on EBay returned “1696 items found for iPhone“. And iLaunch hasn’t even arrived yet. I can’t wait til’ Saturday when I’l lbe presented with the opportunity to buy an empty iPhone box or complete iPhone manual.

OK, this is what I’ve been afraid of. The aggregate costs have been computed and here’s the hit to the bottom line for all of those waiting in line for the iLaunch. OK, so a very quick comparison: Family plan with Verizon; 2 Razrs $49.99 + $35 activation + $79.00/m = $1,981. Again, I think I’m going to stick with what I have.

iPhone Total Cost of Ownership: Up to $5,914.76

This quick and dirty spreadsheet indicates the total cost of iPhone ownership over a 24 month contract, excluding likely extras such as accessories and hidden charges.

I think the apparent lack of hidden charges is one of the things Apple scores big with: unlike so much in the cellphone game, you know what you’re getting. It’ll be interesting to see the first bills out from AT&T, so we can do an accounting of nickel and diming like the Federal Hogwash Fee and the New Mexico State Chump Charge.

Naturally, most owners won’t be wanting that crazy $220 monthy plan, as detailed at Apple.com when you click the "more minutes" link — you’d have to be on the phone about four hours a day to use up all your daytime minutes! But I can easily see myself racking a good two-and-a-half grand in the next two years.

[Thanks, Wired]

As we inch ever closer to iLaunch, Bloomberg.com tells investors that they may be getting set up for a fall. As with many of their products, Apple would like to capture the market share but in a business that is four times larger than the PC market, this could be harder than most people think.

Apple IPhone Euphoria May Set Investors Up for Disappointment

By Connie Guglielmo

June 25 (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc., whose market value passed $100 billion in May as euphoria mounted over its iPhone, may be facing investor expectations that are too high.

Apple may sell as many as 200,000 iPhones in the product’s first two days on the market this week and as many as 3 million in the second half of the year, according to the most optimistic analyst estimates. Apple, in its only public forecast, says it plans to sell 10 million next year.

Sales at those levels would outdo the iPod, Apple’s best- selling product to date, for comparable periods. The danger is that Apple may fall short of projections for initial sales and damp investor enthusiasm for the product.

“There’s definitely a lot of buzz,’’ said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon. “If they only sell 100,000, that would be bad’’ and the stock will fall. Hargreaves is one of two analysts predicting two-day sales of 200,000.

[Thanks, Bloomberg]

Well, I almost missed this article in Information Week. Reinforcing my claim that Not All That Glitters Is Gold.

iPhone Backlash Misses the Point
Posted by Richard Martin, Jun 20, 2007 06:50 PM

Fake Steve Jobs is not someone to suffer indignity lightly. And lately he’s had plenty to wax indignant about. We refer, natch, to the media backlash that has risen to a veritable tide of negativity in advance of the iPhone launch a mere 9 days away (and no, I am not blogging from a sleeping bag in front of my local AT&T Wireless store).

First there was this week’s cover story in New York magazine, in which John Heileman managed to make it clear what a megalomaniac Jobs (the real one) is while admitting that, yes, the iPhone is likely to be a monster hit. Then things got really nasty.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday quoted multiple business CTOs in concluding that, while employees are salivating over the hot new devices, most companies won’t support them: "Many businesses don’t plan to sync them with internal email systems that use technology from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., Microsoft Corp. and Good Technology, owned by Motorola Inc."

London’s Daily Mail weighed in with a negative review, and Forbes called the iPhone "a hacker’s playground." ZDNet bloggers (who seem to multiply like rabbits) weighed in with no fewer than 50 less-than-glowing posts about Jobs’ latest creation. The blogger at Gravitational Pull had the nerve to compare the sleek new quasi-smartphone to a 1994 Saab. How’s that for a backhanded compliment?

[Thanks, Information Week]

As Clara Peller might have asked, Where’s the Beef?

In what must be a high level decision, AT&T announced it’s own video sharing service that will not work on the iPhone. Just what is up with that? We can only imagine that there has been enough lead time to either have Apple tweak the iPhone to play it’s hosts video or for Apple to tweak the video playback standard enough to view the content.

In my opinion, someone in this group is not playing nice and needs a reprimand. Considering the $175.00 service cancellation fee which AT&T is going to insist on charging, my guess is that it’s AT&T.

AT&T Launches Video Sharing Service, But Not For The iPhone

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson yesterday at the NXTcomm conference showed off AT&T’s new video sharing service. The "first-ever service" in the U.S. allows users to share live video over their cell phones while talking. While this is cool, guess what, it won’t work on the iPhone. And this video service is way too expensive.

Let’s take a look at AT&T’s new video service:

It works only on the company’s 3G, or third-generation, wireless network and requires a Video Share-capable phone, AT&T said. The company said it will offer Video Share service packs for $4.99 and $9.99 a month, depending on included minutes. Without a plan, the service costs 35 cents a minute.

New AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson told a telecommunications industry trade show in Chicago that the new service has the potential to expand rapidly beyond wireless-to-wireless.

So you have to buy a special handset — but it doesn’t work on the iPhone because the iPhone doesn’t have 3G. and you have to pay $4.99 a month of $9.99 a month (or $0.35 a minute) in addition to your normal 3G data plan. While the idea is cool, this thing is priced to fail.

During the same keynote where he launched this new video sharing service, Stephenson kept talking about how he sees video as the future of his company. I too share his enthusiasm, but AT&T needs to do a few things better. First, they need to launch new services like this at more reasonable prices. And, more importantly, they need better 3G coverage with cool new devices that take advantage of it.

[Thanks, Information Week]

Ummmmm, like, you’re kidding, right? Please tell me your kidding. Please????

Will you be able to unbox your own iPhone?

Posted Jun 22nd 2007 9:00AM by Michael Rose

You’ve saved your pennies, and then thought better of the whole penny-centric strategy. You’ve moved on to cashing in your savings bonds. You’ve figured out which AT&T store is furthest off the beaten track. (Google Earth, suggests trying Key West, FL.) You’ve considered the delicate balance between on-queue caffeine intake and the likelihood of line jumping when you dodge out to the restroom. You’ve planned, thought, considered, and strategized pretty much everything about getting your hands on that iPhone.

But have you considered whose hands will handle it before you do? Well, have you? Reader Chris Freitag had a panic attack earlier today and did the only reasonable thing. He told us about it.

A horrible, terrible thought crept into my head today as I fantasized about what it will be like to actually get to the counter of my local Apple Store the evening of June 29 and finally get my hands on my iPhone.

What if the first hands to touch *my* iPhone aren’t my hands?

I’ve been a Cingular customer for over 3 years, and every single time I have purchased a new phone the customer service rep opens the box, removes all of the plastic wrapping from the phone, battery, and battery cover. They put the SIM card into the phone, power on the phone, then proceed to futz with the phone for a few minutes while they’re setting it up. This has never been an issue for me because I have never had an attachment to the packaging nor to the product being opened. I like cool new phones but none of them have ever had much of an emotional impact on me.

Now compare that with Apple products. If you’re as into Apple products as I am, then you understand what it means to come home with your shiny new Apple toy and open the packaging. The good folks at Apple always take such great care in packaging that it is a true joy to open the products. Everything about the presentation just leads you to that moment when you actually utter the word "whoa" as you finally get to the product you’ve lusted after for so long. It is without fail sleeker, smaller, slimmer, and sexier than any picture could convey. It’s part of the Apple experience.

And if an AT&T employee unwraps all of that Apple-designed packaging goodness right in front of me, and then mauls my new iPhone with their grubby mitts, I’m going to lose it right there at the store.

Unfortunately, judging by comments on Erica’s post, the contract and activation process will almost certainly involve hands-on time with store personnel. Unless Apple’s magic mojo arrangement with AT&T includes online contract setup and number porting via iTunes (now that would be quite a trick) it looks like the first hands on your iPhone won’t be yours.

Chris, we feel your pain.

[Thanks for the LAUGH, tuaw]

So, it’s not just Apple that’s taking a slightly lower than high road with the immanent release of the much touted iPhone. (See related story) AT&T intends to charge you $175.00 for early cancellation despite the fact you’re not getting any kind of deal on the price of the phone. Isn’t that special!

For years cell phone companies have argued that those early cancellation fees help offset the cost of discounting a new phone to a new subscriber, but we’re not getting a discount this time, are we? We’re just getting the shaft from the man because he knows he can get away with it. It’s the frikkin iPhone for Gods sake. If you want it, you’ll play by our rules. Go forth lemmings and consume.

Canceling iPhone service early will cost $175

AT&T: Fee covers more than just the new device

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | June 22, 2007

AT&T Inc. has spent $50 million to beef up its relatively slow wireless network in anticipation of the heightened activity expected to follow the iPhone’s debut next week, but any customer who isn’t wowed by the new gadget will find it costly to cancel the service.

Even though AT&T isn’t subsidizing the iPhone’s hefty price — $499 to $599, depending on the storage capacity a customer chooses — the company will charge a $175 termination fee for iPhone users who want to break their two-year contracts.

Most cellphones sell for less than their true cost, with the cellular network paying the difference. In exchange, customers promise to use the service for a set period, usually two years. When subscribers cancel early, phone companies charge a cancellation fee, usually citing the need to recoup the cost of the subsidized phone.

But AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said that termination fees pay for more than phone subsidies. "There are certain fixed costs we incur in serving every customer who establishes service with us," Siegel said. He refused to specify those costs.

Michael Gartenberg, vice president of JupiterResearch in New York, called the iPhone termination fee "a little odd," but doubted that many customers would object. "I don’t think for most consumers it’s an issue," he said.

[Thanks, Boston Globe]