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According to documents obtained by CNET, the DEA is upset because the encryption used by Apple's iMessage foils their ability to snoop on those communications. Even with a warrant (increasingly seen as optional these days by law enforcement and intelligence agencies) and the fact that carriers let the NSA snoop on everything in real time, "it is impossible to intercept iMessages between two Apple devices." Well not entirely impossible; the memo notes that sometimes interception is possible, but it would require the government to conduct man in the middle attacks using spoofed cell towers, something the feds just got busted for using for years without properly informing Judges. Encryption isn't particularly hard, but as an ACLU analyst in the CNET piece points out, most companies and providers don't put any effort into it: Christopher Soghoian, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said yesterday that "Apple's service is not designed to be government-proof." "It's much much more difficult to intercept than a telephone call or a text message" that federal agents are used to, Soghoian says. "The government would need to perform an active man-in-the-middle attack... The real issue is why the phone companies in 2013 are still delivering an unencrypted audio and text service to users. It's disgraceful." The government has been pushing for years to have wiretap and privacy laws like CALEA changed to provide them with easier access to encrypted services like Gmail. 49 comments
AT&T has confirmed that their implementation of HD voice will be deployed at the end of 2013 (read: 2014). Speaking to AllThingsD, AT&T senior VP Kris Rinne simply stated that "HD Voice is part of our voice over LTE strategy," though he failed to offer any real specifics. Most carrier deployments of voice over LTE (VoLTE) have been delayed due to the fact that the technology is an incredible battery hog, in some cases reducing overall battery life by 50 percent when placing VoLTE calls. T-Mobile has already deployed HD Voice; their implementation doesn't eat battery life and consumes much less bandwidth (12.65kbps), but doesn't offer quite the same audio fidelity as fully fledged VoLTE will. 17 comments
AT&T West employees in California and Nevada are currently reporting to work, but have threatened to strike if they can't strike a new deal with AT&T. According to Southern California Public Radio, the 18,000 workers and CWA members rejected a new contract proposal from AT&T last week over wages and benefits. As is usually the case, AT&T says they have a "contingency workforce of well-trained managers and vendors" to handle the workload disruption if a strike happens, though a strike will of course mean major delays in DSL and U-Verse installs and repairs. 15 comments
AT&T appears poised to begin offering new U-Verse speed tiers that should offer a belated speed increase for bandwidth-hungry users. Earlier this year AT&T promised users they'd eventually see 75-100 Mbps using line bonding, though the company was somewhat murky on deployment time -- or upstream speeds.  story continues..96 comments
Last week the White House responded to complaints that cell phone unlocking is now illegal by effectively punting the issue to Congress, with various politicians now scurrying to get their names in lights with new laws making cell unlocking legal again. While it's unclear if any of these bills will succeed, AT&T for one says its users don't have to worry. 49 comments
If you live in the United States, you may be familiar with the common sentiment that you generally cannot take your favorite cellular enabled device (tablet, smartphone, Sony PlayStation Vita, etc.) and use it on any carrier you like. With GSM carriers, this is referred to as a SIM lock. story continues..40 comments
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Yesterday we noted that despite the copyright industry's new "six strikes" anti-piracy campaign launch, just one ISP had bothered to put anything about the plan on their website. AT&T sent us a statement justifying their lack of website information by saying they intend to communicate directly with impacted users. 39 comments
AT&T over the weekend got about as close as they're likely to in admitting they messed up the acquisition of T-Mobile. "I wouldn't say it was a bad decision, but it was a decision that didn't go the way I wanted," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said at a conference over the weekend. "We didn't execute well." Granted a big reason the deal fell through is because AT&T kept repeatedly lying to regulators about job creation and deal benefits, lies that in at least one instance were debunked by AT&T's own attorney who accidentally posted un-redacted documents online for everyone to see. Aside from the fact that killing off T-Mobile was anti-competitive (and, as it has turned out, totally unnecessary), AT&T hubris was a major reason the deal fell through, and there's little to no indication AT&T learned much of anything from the whole affair. 10 comments
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Former Virginia Demoratic Congressman Rick Boucher used to have a lot of nerd credibility in the technology field, urging regulators to aim high when it came to broadband goals, while being one of the pre-eminent voices for fair use rights. What has been he doing since leaving Congress? Working for AT&T as a paid sockpuppet, penning pro-AT&T editorials in major news outlets without disclosing his ties to AT&T. 32 comments
Originally, AT&T only allowed users to use Facetime over Wi-Fi. Then, they allowed Facetime over cellular, but only if users signed up for their new shared data plan with its $15 per gigabyte overage fees. story continues..27 comments
As we discussed back in 2010, AT&T's "Microcell" service essentially acts as a miniature cell tower in a user's home -- routing cell calls over the user's broadband. While these femtocell services are useful for users with poor reception, telco business models have often crippled the devices. 33 comments
For a company whose U-Verse fiber to the node broadband service has consistently under-performed in the battle against cable, AT&T executives were very confident in future U-Verse speed claims while speaking at their developer conference this week at CES. AT&T recently announced that they'd be expanding their U-Verse footprint from 24.5 million homes to 33 million, though the company used some fuzzy math to make the expansion seem much larger than it was. 64 comments
A prodigious patent troll is now taking aim at ISPs large and small, hoping to extract cash from ISPs for simply using DSL gear. According to numerous court filings, a company by the name of Brandywine Communications Technologies is on a suing spree, claiming that numerous ISPs have violated seven different DSL-related patent Brandywine claims to own. 40 comments
As we noted last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee had been working on an update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 that would have strengthened consumer e-mail privacy protections, requiring that the government obtain a warrant before snooping user e-mail or remotely stored data (like cloud storage). It was a surprising direction for a government that has relentless pushed to eliminate all citizen privacy protections, so not too surprisingly the Amendment has been killed without explanation: Last month, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an amendment attached to the Video Privacy Protection Act Amendments Act (which deals with publishing users’ Netflix information on Facebook pages) that would have required federal law enforcement to obtain a warrant before monitoring email or other data stored remotely (i.e., the cloud). The Senate was set to approve the video privacy bill along with the email amendment, which would have applied to a different law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. But then senators decided for reasons unknown to drop the amendment. Current law allows the government to sift through emails and other cloud data without a warrant provided the data has been stored for 180 days or more. However, with wiretaps installed at most large carriers providing the government user communications in real time, it's believed that those laws are generally laughed at by intelligence services. 36 comments
Back in February we noted that AT&T, the company that really started the network neutrality debate to begin with, had come up with yet another awful new idea: charging app makers a fee if they wanted to reach consumers without hitting their usage caps. While AT&T presented the idea as akin to a 1-800 number for data or "free shipping," what it actually is a troll toll imposed by AT&T allowing them to rake in new cash -- and impose their power on a content ecosystem that operates better with AT&T out of the way. 43 comments
"White space" broadband, a technology that rides on the unlicensed spectrum freed by the migration to digital television, only recently got off the ground and has significant potential promise as a new, inexpensive, long range niche wireless alternative. As such, wireless carriers like AT&T have been trying their best to kill it in the metaphorical cradle to prevent potential future competitors. 74 comments
See update at bottom of post. AT&T has removed tools and functionality for some grandfathered unlimited data wireless users that allowed them to track and monitor their data consumption. story continues..19 comments
AT&T has yet again found itself at the bottom of the Consumer Reports rankings for wireless service, though there are hints that AT&T's LTE network could improve the company's fortunes. The latest rankings, as usual buried behind a pay wall, surveyed 63,253 cellphone subscribers to get their impressions of their wireless carrier. 59 comments
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