Do you feel that telephone companies should take action when someone is using their services to harass a person, such as repeated prank calls or using SS7 signalling to capture calls that aren’t theirs?
That is a far cry from a telephone company deciding(rightly or wrongly) that Tootie is harassing Tito or that it rises to a legal level of harassment and just blocking Tootie from the platform entirely. They are not in the judgement game here, they are in the make it easy for Tito to decide for himself if Tootie should be able to reach him via $TelephoneCompany.
As for SS7 signalling, that's clearly breaking laws, that's a totally different thing.
Hate speech is illegal in many jurisdictions too. So are specific uses of phones for other purposes, aka "wire fraud."
Of course, "you can only moderate speech that's illegal" is different from "you can moderate anything you want" but it's also incompatible with the ruling
The courts are responsible for determining the correct course of action, post-conviction. A court may rule that a convict can't use a phone as a condition of parole, but a phone company will never refuse service.
No one is complaining about the courts pursuing crimes. The issue is extra-judicial punishments enacted by corporations often under pressure from the government.
If I use my phone to say terrible things or even to commit felony fraud the police will investigate me, arrest me, I'll be tried and convicted and so on.
But at no point will the phone company cancel my telephone service. Fraudsters can get phone service. Murders can get phone service.
The court will place limits on the person, but it's unheard of for the phone company to restrict access because of conduct.
The problem we're facing is that modern communications platforms (including social media) have very different norms. Some of those norms are imposed because of direct governmental regulatory influence. We're dragging various social media companies to testify before congress and openly pressuring them to censor with overt threats to their business. This destroys the notion that these companies are somehow engaging in censorship entirely of their own volition.
This 5th circuit court ruling isn't framed right, but the underlying issue here does need to be addressed.
This isn't correct. I work for a tier 2 telco and both CLECs and ILECs regularly cancel accounts known for fraudulent traffic. At first they'll block the originating traffic from routing across their switch, but after review and positive confirmation they will terminate the subscribers account.
There is a constant arms race to detect and prevent fraudulent traffic. The idea the LECs would knowingly continue to provide service to these accounts is nonsense.
I am confident you have absolutely no examples of cancelling a customer because of the voice data they transmitted inside of a call, to another person.
https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/criminal-defense/can-pran...
In a functioning society, no. This power and responsibility belongs to the judicial system.
> or using SS7 signalling to capture calls that aren’t theirs?
If SS7 had a real security model, then carriers should enforce that security model. In cases where the protocol security does not help (many cases, AIUI), then I think carriers probably should be able to enforce correct use of the system. (The latter has nothing in particular to do with who the offending SS7 user’s customers are or what they’re saying.)
The platform should make a best-effort to provide enough information for law enforcement to take over and use verbiage that is compatible with the legal system.
Not siding for private corps, but what happens when it is the executive branch doing the deeds that you are expecting the executive to crack down on?
Imagine an effective executive branch that can handle all such enforcement. The size would be massive. You’re implicitly asking for a Chinese-government-like internet monitor capable of charging tens of thousands of people a day.
So for example, if I create posts saying I am going to shoot up a place, people should be able to report that and based on my location the appropriate law enforcement agents should see a red light on their dashboard. Moderators should have votes with higher weight. Agents can then investigate the content and mark it is "false alert" or as "credible threat" thus raising visibility to partner agencies. False reporting must also have consequences or the system would be abused to DDoS the assorted agencies.
People that do not wish to participate in such a system might in theory find some tech-savvy friends to host private servers for the conversations that would otherwise be flagged as inciting or committing a crime. This removes risk and liability from the platform, its investors and moves the liability to the people creating the risk. There are a myriad of self hosted platforms with varying degrees of complexity or simplicity.
Swatting is a serious felony too and can get you serious time.
I say this knowing full well that SS7 will never be fixed. I maintained SS7 switches and understand the international complexity this dated system brings. Its a full topic in and of itself but I believe it is time to move everything off SS7, to what exactly I am not sure.
Is the telco responsible for maintaining an architecture where swatting is impossible? I think not. I think this limited liability is part of being a commons. The city isn't liable if a bank robber uses a road to escape. The Forrest service shouldn't be liable if a hiker trips and breaks their leg.
Full liability leads to full restriction and full oppression