Just last week, AT&T was in the news for two major stories, revealing them as… I think the legal term is “dicks”.

On Tuesday, classified documents were released confirming that they did indeed help the NSA with their warrantless wire-tapping activities. They didn’t just look the other way while the NSA did all the work but coordinated with them, re-routing traffic and purchasing equipment to make surveillance easier. The first of these “spy rooms” was constructed in San Francisco, about four blocks from my office. To be clear, this is not stepping out of the way to let justice be served—the wiretaps are illegal—it’s more like approaching a mugging in progress and offering the mugger a bigger gun.

Then on Wednesday, AT&T announced plans to “filter content” over the internet. They’ve outlined a plan where their servers will monitor the data packets sent through them and delete any that are found to by infringing on copyrights. They feel that somehow, by contributing to the infrastructure, they own what it carries. Imagine your water company deciding when you’re allowed to have water or your power company deciding when you’re allowed to have power. For even less of a stretch, imagine your telephone company (quite possibly AT&T) deciding which phone calls you can make or receive. Consider further that something like “copyrighted content” is not uniformly illegal, as legality depends on usage, and you’ve got a real bull-in-a-china-shop situation (fitting because filtering internet content is a criticism often aimed at the Chinese government).

Put these two together and you see an AT&T that uses their power irresponsibly and, quite possibly, illegally. Not an ideal partner for Apple, whose been trying to keep their image clean. Yet when the iPhone comes out on June 29th, the only way to get it is along with a Cingular/AT&T plan. What’s a nerd to do? Here are a few possible solutions.

Steve’s “blog” has recently had some fairly landmark posts on it about Apple’s perspective on DRM and their environmental policies, both of which have been in response to popular activist campaigns (the Free Software Foundation and Greenpeace, respectively). Perhaps they’d be willing to listen to reason on why telecommunications companies constantly monitoring our communications is not an ideal feature for “our digital life“.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) continues to fight the bully telecoms in multiple arenas. Oh that’s right, AT&T is also starkly against Network Neutrality and even funds astroturf groups to represent a non-existent public outcry in their favor. Almost forgot that. So the second possible solution is to set up a monthly donation to EFF equal to or exceeding your monthly donation (i.e. bill) to AT&T.

The last option is to wait for the iPhone to become available on Verizon (only marginally better on the Net Neutrality front) or another service. This could happen after the exclusive partnership with AT&T is over (see, even Apple gets locked into lame 2-year contracts) or by someone unlocking the iPhone so it can be used with other carriers.

My current plan is to wait on the iPhone. Mostly this is because I’ve learned my lesson on buying 1st generation new product lines from Apple, having purchased one of the first G4s back in 2000 and one of the first MacbookPros last year. Both are phenomenal machines, with just a few kinks that have since been worked out. But, unless I wait the full 5 years, this doesn’t address the political aspects of avoiding AT&T. Also to consider: does it make a damn difference? I’ve been boycotting Sony for almost ten years now and I don’t think anyone but my mom even knows. Ultimately, I think it’s a “can you look at yourself in the mirror-like shiny Apple logo?” issue. And that’s a question we need to ask ourselves over more than just the phone we use.

It’s workplanning season where I work and everyone is struggling to incorporate the organization’s anti-oppression and diversity initiatives into their priorities. On the one hand, I’m very lucky because I’ve got the web in my corner—clearly the biggest force for democracy since the printing press. On the other hand, thinking outside of the server-shaped box is sometimes difficult for the technically minded and there’s clearly a huge difference between the possibilities inherent to the medium and the capabilities of a small web team at a non-profit. What follows is not a list of the projects I’m pursuing over the next 12 months, but the principles that are guiding my brainstorming. Please feel free to suggest some actual projects (or challenge my anti-oppression analysis).

Oppression, as I’m using the term, is ideological domination resulting in exploitation of one social group for the benefit of another. Racism is a form of oppression based on ethnicity, valuing (at least in the United States) people of European descent over African, Native American, etc. Sexism is another based on gender and there are lots more. A common tendency is that these dominant ideologies tend to be both reinforced from a centralized source (mass media) and also internalized by oppressor and oppressed alike—to the point where (for example) a woman might believe that she could never be as good a lawyer as a man because she’s “too emotional”.

Now, some ideas on how the web can help.

Open the vectors. McKenzie Wark’s “A Hacker Manifesto” (have I mentioned I love manifestos?) well describes a Vectoralist Class which maintains its power largely by controlling access to information, not land or wealth. Considering the role that mass media plays in reaffirming oppressive narratives (e.g. all African American youth are in gangs), opening the vectors so that marginalized stories can be told is an immediate disruption. This process involves relinquishing editorial control and finding alternative methods of distribution, for instance community-generated feeds replacing hand-picked content or facilitating non-traditional authorship (i.e. stewarding content from an oppressed community to the mass media). It’s important to examine both the input and output, so the content that’s being produced (and valued) and the ways it’s being disseminated without being manipulated to conform to pre-existing standards.

Interrupt feedback loops. The coder in me might suggest that power and privilege seem (ironically?) to follow a Power Curve. A Power Curve, aka Zipf Law, aka the Pareto Principle is a relationship exhibited in lots of situations, but most often when previous performance affects future performance—called the Yule Process. Popular websites get linked to more often than non-popular websites, making them more popular. Books that sell well appear on lists or are talked about, making them sell better. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. On the web, it was pointed out long ago that there’s still a lot of area under the curve and the web lacks the necessity of focus that makes the it possible to dominate an entire field. Amazon.com isn’t limited by shelf space, it can offer a book that sells very few copies. A local movie theater has to show movies it knows will make money so it can pay rent; YouTube doesn’t. LonelyGirl15 or ZeFrank are stars without ever having begged Paramount to distribute them.

Challenge the story. Digging up dirt seems like what the internet does best. As our failing Fourth Estate sleeps on the job, citizen media and general muckrakers do their job for them. It’s not just journalism-type information that’s getting out into the public because of the internet. The amazing Maplight project (which just won NetSquared’s Innovation Award) connects corporations that give legislators money to how those legislators then vote on legislation supporting those corporations. Following the money and seeing how bought your Senator is has never been easier. Personally, I think this would be one of the biggest (and first) losses if network neutrality failed to be safeguarded.

Man, this was a hard one to write. Everyday posts are a bitch.

The warning signs were visible before I even ran into problems with tech support. I took out the cable modem and got it running pretty quickly. I didn’t even need to install all of the fancy Flash demos from the “Manual” CD. However, I was immediately given pause by the curiously labelled button “Internet On/Off”. This could get me in real trouble. What if my cat accidentally bumped it right in the middle of a Japanese professor publishing his important findings on cancer research! And I would be getting calls all day long from kids trying to upload pictures of their boobs/biceps (or both) on MySpace, “Stan! Did you turn off the internet again?”

Exhibit 1: A very dangerous button.

The next major flag was when I put in the installation CD. Not only does it tell me to turn off all firewalls, anti-virus software, and poke holes in all my condoms… it then has the audacity to not let me actually install anything unless I do it using Internet Explorer. Even Microsoft tells Mac users to just use Safari instead. I, very reluctantly, click “yes” to continue. The installer then asks me for my administrator password. “Why?” I ask. “I just wanted to change your internet settings,” it says. “Can’t you just tell me what they should be?” I ask. “No, it’s really better if I do it myself,” it replies. I type in my password.

It gives me an error and quits.

Exhibit 2: Please drink poison before continuing this installation.

At this point I ask my roommate if it looks like I’m doing anything retarded. She confirms my sanity, so we engage in a lively text chat with Comcast’s finest. His advice… Turn off the modem and turn it back on 5 minutes later. I do that. Same error. I fire up the Mac’s diagnostic software and see that the installer keeps resetting the network settings to something ridiculous. I set it to DHCP by hand. Now every website redirects to Comcast. I consider this progress.

We text chat with another technician. His advice… Do you have Flash? Seriously. I am trying to install a modem and he asks me about Flash. “Flash?” I ask, “Like, the plug-in?” “Make sure you have version 9,” he offers. “How exactly will that prevent Comcast from rerouting all of my HTTP requests to your website? I don’t think that’s the problem.” “You can see the Comcast website?” “I just told you that.” “Oh, then just click on the installation link at the bottom of the page.” “Fine.” No, I was not actually that snippy.

I do. It downloads and installs the same damn thing that came on the CD. I am back to square one. I switch over the ADSL and surf around a bit. I learn about “Walled Gardens” and “Modem Provisioning”. I get educated. I decide to call back and tell them that the problem is that their installer is not sending the MAC address for my modem and that they need to add me by hand. This solution is made possible by people other than Comcast publishing information about Comcast’s network. It scares me completely that if network neutrality isn’t made law that I could be completely prevented from accessing sites Comcast considers offering information to “hackers” or something.

Exhibit 3: Yes, the majesty of the Comcast High-Speed Internet

I wish this story had a happy ending. When I called Comcast again, I got a very friendly woman who, unfortunately, couldn’t do much more for me than fill out an Escalation Ticket. “It’s too bad you can’t just flip it on for me,” I say. “Well, we could a month ago, but that privilege has since been removed. Honestly, we’re kind of frustrated about it.” “Me, too.”

The final dystopian vision came while I was flipping through the Comcast brochure while on hold. It is entitled “A fast look at all you can do with your new Comcast High-Speed Internet service” and is filled with popular internet destinations like: Comcast PhotoCenter, Disney Connection, The Fan (which lets me watch “clips”!), and Rhapsody^TM. No mention of Flickr, Homestar Runner, YouTube, or Last.fm. No, sir. Why would anyone want any of those when we’ve got all the Comcast approved services… that would inevitably run faster than their more diverse counterparts if Comcast gets their way?

The online news source TPMmuckraker (the TPM, in this case, standing for Talking Points Memo) reported this afternoon:

Every single contributor to the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate candidate is actually a conservative—except for the candidate himself.

Yeah, really. The Republicans are funding efforts to get the Green Party on the ballot in order to split the votes for the Democrats. Brilliant! They must have some pretty creative, outside-the-box thinkers on that campaign. Some of them may even use Macs! The whole list is available at Attytood.

Why the sudden change of heart? It may have something to do with Santorum getting a tighter race than he bargained for from his Democratic opponent, Robert Casey. In these days of gerry-mandered districts and bought elections, it’s nice to see incumbants with a healthy dose of “Fear of the People”.

Other extreme tactics he’s employing? How about facing off against Tubemeister Senator Ted Stevens in trying to prevent the Network Neutrality bill from ever making it to the Senate floor (knowing he’d get hammered for voting against The Internet)? Or maybe labeling his opponent as a terrorist-lover by saying Casey took money from Al-Jazeera. Except that it was a different Al-Jazeerah. Oops.

1. Hands Off the Internet, a “grassroots” website against network neutrality.
2. Tom Giovanetti’s OpEd in the Mercury News, “Network neutrality? Welcome to the stupid Internet.”
3. Sen. Ted Stevens’ already infamous “The Internet is a series of tubes” speech.

Let’s deal with these in order of hilarity.

First, there’s nothing “dirty” about poor Senator Stevens. He just clearly has no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t even know the dude’s party affiliation, and frankly it doesn’t matter. But it does show that the lobbyists are pulling out all the stops and not letting this one merely play out in the “Court of Public Opinion” (probably because they know they’d be found guilty) by rounding up all the Luddite, out-of-touch Senators they can in order to stop net neutrality in its tracks. Perhaps I’m being unfair to this elected official. Obviously, we can’t expect our duly-appointed representatives to be experts on every subject, like “what the internet is”.

Second, I’m unsure how to approach Tom Giovanetti’s piece, because I not only fundamentally disagree with him, but I also happen to know that he’s a hired gun PR guy that gets paid to polish turds. He’s the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative think-tank that muddies the waters around debates that should be open-and-shut if a sincere discussion were to take place. Consider his previous work for privatizing social security and against municipal wireless and open source software. So, he’s a dick.

But even beyond that, consider his argument against network neutrality: access to mainstream media, like television and telephones and even police radio, will plunge into chaos because of “extremely high demand” for something stupid. Where are the heroic telecoms flying to the rescue to prioritize content!? Their hands are tied by draconic legislation! Argh! Except, isn’t “extremely high demand” already prioritizing content? Who benefits from a system that prioritizes anything other than what people want? Perhaps whomever is paying Mr. Giovanetti?

Finally, the “grassroots” website. The most astute of you will notice the quotation marks I insist on putting around the word “grassroots”. This is perhaps because the “grassroots” website is produced in connection with PR group Public Strategies, Inc. and funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from telecoms and conservative lobby groups. So, if you consider AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular to be the ABCs of concerned regular folks like you and me, feel free to remove the quotation marks when you talk about it.

I don’t completely blame them. Just like record companies, oil companies, and certain government agencies, everyone’s trying to pay the rent and send their kids to college and so they work the system with whatever tools they have in their chest. The telecoms may have a lot of money and power but they should know that—after seeing the revolutionary promise of the printing press, radio, and television turned into celebrity spreads, pre-programmed rotations, and reality shows—we’re not going to let the internet go without a fight. It has finally pulled itself out of its pages-of-links-to-pages-of-links phase and started to make good on its promise to connect and empower people. We should let it.