| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The first phone company to publish a transparency report isn't AT&T or Verizon. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dear Craig,
We issued this first-ever telecom transparency report in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's dragnet that collects information about the phone calls, emails and other communications of virtually all Americans. The headline in the Washington Post read: "The first phone company to publish a transparency report isn't AT&T or Verizon." It's your phone company, CREDO. Read the first-ever telecom transparency report by clicking here. This is a very big deal. In addition to the Washington Post article, the influential tech site Mashable wrote a piece from the industry perspective: "Small Carrier 'CREDO Mobile' Publishes Industry's First Transparency Report". And Wired offered a longer piece with an historical perspective titled "Telecom Believed to Be at Center of Gov Court Fight Files Surveillance Transparency Report". We're proud of our long history defending civil liberties and fighting against abuses of power that threaten our constitutional rights to privacy, not just for our phone customers like you, but for all Americans. Despite the shocking revelations of NSA abuses, the U.S. government continues to defend unconstitutional programs to systematically spy on Americans. So it's up to companies like ours to lift the curtain to the extent allowed by law and fight for our constitutional rights. CREDO opposes overreaching government surveillance of American citizens, and has fought for full repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, and to that end is working to pass Rep. Rush Holt's Surveillance State Repeal Act. During the Bush Administration, CREDO fought against the unprecedented federal wiretapping of American citizens without any court order and the cover-up that followed, including advocating for an end to the retroactive immunity granted to protect telecom companies from facing charges for colluding with the NSA in the illegal wiretapping of Americans. True reform of our surveillance state will require action by Congress or the courts. Until full repeal of these laws is successful, CREDO is endorsing the USA Freedom Act to halt the dragnet indiscriminately sweeping up the phone records of Americans under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and to provide much-needed transparency for National Security Letters and other warrantless spying on our citizens. It's also important to note that we oppose Sen. Feinstein's recent intelligence bill (the so-called "FISA Improvements Act") which, under the guise of reform, does nothing to prevent the rampant 4th and 1st Amendment abuses that have become routine practices of a rogue NSA and other intelligence agencies, and in fact would codify the bulk collection practices of the NSA that so many Americans oppose. CREDO has given nearly $2,000,000 to civil liberties groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Demand Progress, and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. We want you to know that with support from your phone and credit card bills, you are not only part of a company and an activism organization fighting overreach of the NSA and our surveillance state -- you're also providing much needed resources to groups who are pursuing an aggressive strategy in the courts to have these laws declared unconstitutional in the face of inaction by the White House and Congress. We are proud to have an aggressive legislative agenda backed up by the activism of CREDO Action, with its nearly 3.5 million members. In the last year alone, our activists have made over 5,800 phone calls, sent 10,967 individual letters in the mail, and submitted more than 1,100,000 petition signatures and public comments protesting abuses of our 4th and 1st Amendment rights by the NSA, FISA courts, and federal law enforcement authorities. And now, as a telecom carrier, our transparency report represents a small and achievable step forward towards improved civil liberties protections and NSA reforms advocated by CREDO. You can take action now to fight for our civil liberties with the following actions:
Thank you for being part of CREDO -- as a customer we couldn't do this work without you. If you'd like to share this update with your friends on Facebook, click here. To share on Twitter, click here. To share a link, cut and paste this URL: http://act.credoaction.com/signup/customer_transparency/?source=email_link Sincerely, Michael Kieschnick, CEO CREDO TRANSPARENCY REPORT - 2013
CREDO has a long history of defending
civil liberties and fighting against abuses of power that threaten
Americans’ constitutional rights to privacy. We are working for full
repeal of the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendments Act. Until such time
as full repeal can be achieved, as well as afterward, we strongly
believe there should be as much transparency as possible regarding
government surveillance, and that our customers have the right to know
when governmental entities request access to their information or
communications. Accordingly, we are today publishing a transparency
report detailing the number of governmental requests for customer
information1
and the content of customer communications we received in 2013 that are
not subject to a legal order not to disclose, and publish similar
reports on a quarterly basis going forward.
It is our policy to notify our customers, whenever allowed by
law, of the existence of a governmental request for their information.
It is important to note that it may not be possible for CREDO or any
telecom carrier to release to the public a full transparency report, as
the USA PATRIOT Act and other statutes give law enforcement the ability
to prevent companies from disclosing whether or not they have received
certain orders, such as National Security Letters (NSLs) and Section 215
orders seeking customer information. CREDO has and continues to
publicly advocate for the repeal of laws such as these that infringe
upon our customers’ constitutional right to due process.NUMBER OF REQUESTS TO CREDO
Number of governmental requests for customer information pursuant to subpoena, summons, court order, or other process: 15
Note: Our report does not include information requests consented
to by the customer (e.g., to trace a lost or stolen phone) or civil
requests.Number of emergency governmental requests for customer information2: 1 Number of governmental requests for which some or all information requested was produced3: 14 (88%) Number of governmental requests for which customer communication content information requested (including wiretap requests) was produced: 0 Number of customer accounts for which customer information was produced: 15 ORIGIN, LOCATION, AND TYPE OF REQUESTCREDO provides US-based telecom services.
CREDO ADVOCACY AND FUNDINGCREDO supports the repeal the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, and the passage of Rep. Rush Holt’s Surveillance State Repeal Act. Until full repeal can be achieved, CREDO has worked specifically to reform the worst abuses of both acts. This includes fighting to roll back the National Security Letter (NSL) provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, and fighting to make FISA Court opinions public so that the American people know how the secret FISA court is interpreting the law. CREDO endorses the USA Freedom Act and the Amash Amendment, both aimed at halting the indiscriminate dragnet sweeping up the phone records of Americans. CREDO also opposes Senator Feinstein’s FISA Improvements Act which would codify the NSA’s unconstitutional program of surveillance by bulk collection.In addition to our civil rights activism, we also are a committed funder of civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. Transparency Report Release Date: January 8, 2014
1 Customer information refers to non-content information such a
customer’s name, address, bill information, or handset or account
information. Regarding the content of customer communications, CREDO
does not receive or store the content of customer communications. This
report includes only CREDO’s requests and does not include requests
that may have been directed to another carrier.
2 CREDO evaluates emergency requests to ensure they satisfy the requirements of 18 USC § 2702(c)(4) and/or (b)(8).
3 Includes requests for which CREDO had no responsive information.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The first phone company to publish a transparency report isn’t AT&T or Verizon
(philcampbell / Flickr)
Now the first such report is out. But instead of coming from industry mainstays such as Verizon or AT&T, the disclosure comes from a little-known, left-leaning service known as CREDO Mobile.
For the unfamiliar, San Francisco-based CREDO is a progressive organization that supports causes like marriage equality and environmental activism. Its wireless service arm is a small part of that, with around 125,000 subscribers. But the operation helps subsidize the broader organization's political activity, and it's probably safe to say that CREDO Mobile customers are generally in it for ideological reasons.
Still, CREDO Mobile operates just like any other phone service. It partners with Sprint and piggybacks off of its network to provide cellular service to its users. And that means it's subject to the same data requests that its larger cousins routinely face.
According to CREDO Mobile's transparency report, federal, state and local authorities summoned user data from the company 16 times in 2013. That isn't a lot. It makes sense.
One of those cases involved a potentially life-threatening emergency. In 14 cases, CREDO Mobile gave up at least some information in response to the requests, which affect 15 individual user accounts. (This last figure is important, because the impact of an aggregate number of requests is hard to judge without knowing how many real people they cover.)
CREDO also does something very unusual: It breaks down each request not only by type, but also according to the agency that made the request and the state in which the target subscriber lives. The report also discloses whether specific data requests yielded any information.
It probably wasn't too difficult for CREDO to pull together this extra data, given its small size. But it's an enlightening move, and one that other companies would do well to consider adopting in their own disclosures.
Other phone companies — including the nation's four biggest wireless carriers — have spoken about their compliance with government data requests before. But they did so in the context of a congressional probe by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Since then, AT&T and Verizon have vowed to publish a periodic transparency report but have not yet done so.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/01/09/the-first-phone-company-to-publish-a-transparency-report-isnt-att-or-verizon/
