Break

My last few posts highlight my frustration with Verizon over this entire NSA business. Today I began taking action.

I’m in the process of dumping Verizon service across the board. I have Verizon DSL, local phone, long distance and cellular. I just can’t in good conscience give money to a company that pays back their customers by handing over phone records.

I’ve just signed up with a new internet provider. I’m addicted to broadband so I at least needed to find another broadband provider. I narrowed my options between two companies, Comcast and Earthlink. In the end, I went with Comcast. It’s a better deal for me for two reasons. First off, they are faster. Secondly, they are more in line with me politically.

According to the website buyblue.org, Comcast gives an equal share of contributions to Democrats and Repubicans. Contrast that with Verizon and Earthlink, they contribute the bulk of their contributions to Republicans.

So, I’m humming along now at 6Mbps and feel partially liberated. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming days.

Ok, so someone must be lying. After my last email from Verizon where they can neither confirm or deny any participation with the NSA I read this article where Verizon says it didn’t give NSA customer phone records.

I must say I’m certainly glad that Verizon hasn’t been giving out my phone records. If they did, they would know I call my wife frequently, don’t call my parents nearly enough and I … well that’s pretty much it. I don’t make many phone calls.

With my faith in large corporations well restored I went back to work, hoping to put all this behind me. No sooner did I breathe a sigh of relief when I read this:

New Presidential Memorandum Permits Intelligence Director To Authorize Telcos To Lie Without Violating Securities Law. What this article basically says (IANAL) is that in regards to national security matters a corporation can hide (lie) about it’s activities to shareholders.

Here is the memorandum:

[Federal Register: May 12, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 92)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Page 27941-27943]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr12my06-146]

[[Page 27941]]

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Part III

The President

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Memorandum of May 5, 2006--Assignment of Function Relating to Granting
of Authority for Issuance of Certain Directives

Presidential Documents

___________________________________________________________________

Title 3--
The President

[[Page 27943]]

Memorandum of May 5, 2006

Assignment of Function Relating to Granting of
Authority for Issuance of Certain Directives

Memorandum for the Director of National Intelligence

By virtue of the authority vested in me by the
Constitution and laws of the United States, including
section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby
assign to you the function of the President under
section 13(b)(3)(A) of the Securities Exchange Act of
1934, as amended (15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A)). In
performing such function, you should consult the heads
of departments and agencies, as appropriate.

You are authorized and directed to publish this
memorandum in the Federal Register.

(Presidential Sig.)B

THE WHITE HOUSE,

Washington, May 5, 2006.

[FR Doc. 06-4538
Filed 5-11-06; 9:04 am]

Billing code 3910-A7-M

Here are the relevant sections in the SEC code:

With respect to matters concerning the national security of the United States, no duty or liability under paragraph (2) of this subsection shall be imposed upon any person acting in cooperation with the head of any Federal department or agency responsible for such matters if such act in cooperation with such head of a department or agency was done upon the specific, written directive of the head of such department or agency pursuant to Presidential authority to issue such directives. Each directive issued under this paragraph shall set forth the specific facts and circumstances with respect to which the provisions of this paragraph are to be invoked. Each such directive shall, unless renewed in writing, expire one year after the date of issuance.

I just don’t know what to believe anymore.

I read the article the other day about Verizon, Southwest Bell and AT&T handing over my phone call records to the NSA. My first reaction was disbelief. Why would Verizon want to risk annoying their customers. So, I fired off an email to their customer support. Here is the response.

Dear Verizon Customer,

Thank you for contacting the Verizon eCenter. My name is Raquel, and I will be handling your request today.

This message is in response to your email dated May 16, 2006. You inquired about the National Security Agency (NSA) news article . I will be happy to assist you.

We appreciate that the USA Today article and other reports about the possibility that the NSA is able to analyze local call data records is causing concern. Please be assured that Verizon places the highest value on protecting the privacy of our customers.

Anything to do with the NSA is of course highly classified, so we can not comment on whether or not the news article causing concern is even accurate. But we can say that, to the extent that we cooperate with government authorities, we are confident that we are complying with all applicable statutes. We appreciate the continuing opportunity to provide you with service.

Thank you for using Verizon. We appreciate your business.

Sincerely,
Raquel
Verizon eCenter

Not exactly the response I was looking for. I guess I’m going to have to start looking for some Constitution friendly communication providers.

I’m guessing the engineers at Apple do not have the same experience with Windows development as they do with Cocoa development. If they do, they sure are hiding it well. I’m talking about iTunes under Windows, which has to be one of the worst Windows applications by a major software developer.

Something happened to my iTunes setup and I can no longer reliable launch the application. Most of the time I launch the application I get an Application Exception in qttask. I tried reinstalling iTunes, didn’t work. I tried removing and reinstalling iTunes, still broken.After doing a bit of Googling, I noticed that others were having the same problem. One suggestion was to remove and reinstall Quicktime. I tried this and guess what, still doesn’t work. In fact I when I told some co-workers about this problem one of them sympathized with my plight. He had to install iTunes on another PC because he couldn’t get iTunes to work again on his primary system.
Why am I particular annoyed enough by this to post a blog entry? Well, it gives me something to write about. Actually, it creates a rather interesting problem for me. You see, I’ve purchased songs via iTunes Music Store. Apple locks me into using their software/hardware to access songs purchased via iTMS and now, I can no longer listen to them or sync them to my iPod.

This is akin to having a CD collection that only works in one player and having that CD player break. Read that again.

If a CD player was released that tied songs to the player the entire format would be DOA. However, Apple is getting away with this, I think, because there is already a built in tollerance for crappy software. Everyone knows that Windows programs crashes, it’s an accepted and inevitable part of everyone’s day. However, in this case, if someone has a huge investment in iTMS purchases and iTunes breaks than they are in a word, screwed.

I luckily have not made this huge investment. I have a dozen or so songs that I would rather give up than face the alternative - a complete resintall of the OS. For now, my bigger problem is finding software that can sync my iPod. Once I found something that works, I’ll post it here. For now, I’m stuck with the songs already on the iPod.

Ok, it’s another blog clogging up the Internet. I’m sure no one outside is actually reading this. It’s merely a space for me to put down my thoughts.