Again, it's never been about efficiency or saving government money. It's always been about robbing the treasury to enrich Trump and Elon.
And, in related news...DOGE is claiming savings they didn't instigate.
UPDATE 03/03/2025:
Will Verizon sue or bend the knee?
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expected to vote on its plan to kill net neutrality on December 14. People from across the political spectrum are outraged, so we’re planning to protest at Verizon retail stores across the country on December 7, one week before the vote and at the peak of the busy Holiday shopping season. We'll demand that our members of Congress take action to stop Verizon's puppet FCC from killing net neutrality.
And if you need a little extra motivation, recently, Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai – a former top Verizon lawyer – gave us another great reason to protest his plan to kill net neutrality outside Verizon stores. Pai recently spoke at Verizon headquarters in DC. That’s right. One week before the FCC votes on a massive giveaway to Verizon and Big Cable, Ajit Pai decided to go to their headquarters to brag about his plan to throw millions of internet users under the bus. But we can stop the FCC's scheme.
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--Presente Action team
U.S. Labor Secretary Thomas Perez announced that Verizon and the unions have reached an "agreement in principle" on a four-year contract. He said he expects Verizon's (VZ, Tech30) striking workers to be "back on the job next week."
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After working without a contract since August, Verizon union workers walked off the job on April 13. The main sticking points were complaints about poor working conditions, pensions being capped at 30 years of service and jobs getting shipped overseas.
CNN
So, to whom? A US-tied corporate entity which the US can tap, back-door, or otherwise count on to be “cooperative”?The U.S. government is relinquishing its control of the Internet's address system [when the Commerce Department’s – National Telecommunications and Information Administration] contract expires in September 2015] in a shift that may raise questions about the future direction of online innovation and communications.
The decision announced Friday begins a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That's a not-for-profit agency launched in 1998 by the Commerce Department to govern the system that assigns website addresses and directs Internet traffic.
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. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority administers the technology that keeps computers connected to the Web and steers Internet traffic.
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"We will not accept a proposal that replaces the NTAI's role with a government-led or intergovernmental solution," Lawrence Strickling, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, told reporters.
alJazeera
Especially when European countries are discussing creating an entirely separate system to avoid going through US clutches.Although other countries have had a say in how the Internet works, the U.S. government retained veto power over ICANN. That role has fueled recurring debates about whether the U.S. government exerts too much influence over technology that plays such a pivotal role in society and the economy.
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Strickling said the "timing is right" for the Commerce Department to start to phase out of ICANN.
Oh, that’s rich.Some Internet groups contend the U.S. government should remain in a supervisory position to prevent leaders in other countries with a history of suppressing free speech from trying to manipulate ICANN in a way that censors online communications.
”And I intend to see Verizon get that contract,” he did not say.Currently, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — an agency with Commerce — oversees that technical system, named the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Historically, it has contracted the operation of IANA out to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number (ICANN) on a biennial basis. The current contract is set to expire in September of 2015.
ICANN — which contains an advisory board comprised of government representatives — also manages the system for naming domains, ensuring that each web address is registered to only one person.
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While the U.S. can participate in the domain name system through ICANN’s Government Advisory Council, its oversight role of IANA was the only direct link between the U.S. government and the critical Internet infrastructure.
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"A successful transition in the stewardship of these important functions to the global multi-stakeholder community would be a timely and positive step in the evolution of Internet governance," Craig Silliman, senior vice president of public policy [for Verizon], said. "Given the importance of the IANA functions to the stability and correct functioning of the Internet, it will be essential that a plan that preserves the security, stability, and seamless nature of the Internet be developed through a comprehensive multi-stakeholder process prior to the transition.”
Send out the gestapo. Find who leaked that document, and make ‘em sorry.The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
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The court order expressly bars Verizon from disclosing to the public either the existence of the FBI's request for its customers' records, or the court order itself.
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While the order itself does not include either the contents of messages or the personal information of the subscriber of any particular cell number, its collection would allow the NSA to build easily a comprehensive picture of who any individual contacted, how and when, and possibly from where, retrospectively.
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The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa) granted the order to the FBI on April 25, giving the government unlimited authority to obtain the data for a specified three-month period ending on July 19.
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[T] his is the first time significant and top-secret documents have revealed the continuation of the practice on a massive scale under President Obama.
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It is not known whether Verizon is the only cell-phone provider to be targeted with such an order, although previous reporting has suggested the NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks. [...]
Glenn Greenwald
Start your search there.The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two [Democratic] US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration's surveillance activities.
I guess not! Let's just say…”all”…That should cover it.July 27, 2011: In a letter to Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Kathleen Turner, director of legislative affairs for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, [...] said that a joint oversight team “has not found indications of any intentional or willful attempts to violate or circumvent” the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, which was amended in 2008.
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The Obama administration continued Wednesday to resist the efforts of [the] two Democratic senators to learn more about the government’s interpretation of domestic surveillance law, stating that “it is not reasonably possible” to identify the number of Americans whose communications may have been monitored under the statute.
WaPo July 2011
