Senator Wyden: U.S. Wireless Carriers Fail Utterly To Inform Consumers (Or Senators) About Government Surveillance

U.S. wireless providers are, it should go without saying, very shitty when it comes to consumer privacy and security. After decades of mindless deregulation and competition-killing consolidation, there’s less serious regulatory oversight or competitive pressure than ever for these companies to try harder.

As a result, companies like T-Mobile have been hacked five times in an eight year span. Telecoms and app makers routinely over-collect sensitive behavior and location data, then sell access to any random idiot with a few nickels to rub together. And, more recently, wireless providers experienced the worst hack in U.S. telecom history after Chinese hackers exploited lax security and weak U.S. regulatory oversight to spy on high-profile targets.

Driving that point home, Senator Ron Wyden recently compiled a new report detailing how U.S. wireless providers, unlike many tech companies, routinely fail to notify their customers about government surveillance, even when that surveillance breaks the law.

In a press announcement and accompanying letter to his Senate colleagues, Wyden points out that almost all of the major wireless phone providers failed to alert even senators when their personal communications were spied on during a DOJ inquiry during the first Trump administration:

“Wyden learned that the largest phone companies — Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile — failed to establish systems to notify senators about government surveillance requests in violation of their contracts with the Senate. He urged senators and staff to consider switching mobile carriers for their campaign and personal phones to carriers that will notify them about government surveillance demands.”

A convenient, accompanying infographic by Wyden’s office makes it clear most carriers suck:

Of the three wireless providers that do inform customers about government surveillance, two are small fringe players (Cape launched last year with a promise to have a focus on privacy), and the third (Google Fi) heavily leans on existing, larger wireless networks. So even this infographic is a bit generous in terms of your actual choices.

Again, this is a direct result of stuff like mindless merger approval by government (see: Sprint T-Mobile), which has generally resulted in a decrease of any effort to try on compete on price, privacy, or anything else. It’s also a direct result of the steady obliteration of consumer protection standards at the hands of revolving door regulators and an increasingly corrupt Congress.

And it’s getting worse. Trump-stocked courts are making it harder than ever to fine wireless carriers for even the most egregious of privacy violations (see the recent 5th Circuit decision vacating fines for AT&T for spying on user location data). The Trump administration is also taking a hatchet to agencies like the FCC, making it harder than ever to hold wireless carriers to account.

With neither competent federal oversight nor real wireless market competition, nothing improves and the door opens wider to scandals that will make past controversies seem quaint. We’ve been talking about these issues for decades and we continue to head in the complete opposite direction of even the most basic of accountability for these notoriously unethical, nosy companies.

We are a comically corrupt, incompetent country seemingly incapable of the most basic efforts to protect the public from government or corporate power run amok.