RichardHarlos.com

Steve Soto of TheLeftCoaster.com asks, Why Are The Telecoms Directly Denying The USAT Story?

It’s a timely and relevant question so I took a moment to post a comment on his blog post (linked above). My comment, below, makes sense on its own but you’d do well to read Steve’s blog post as well. It offers additional information and context that is useful to anyone wanting to be well-informed about this matter.

Because my comment is so similar to my earlier blog post, What does it mean to listen to a phone call?, I thought I’d share that comment here, too, as food for thought and discussion. I wrote:

• “Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records,” the New York-based phone company said in an e-mailed statement.

Given the predominant legal context in which these allegations become significant, we ought to expect carefully—and I do mean carefully—worded statements regarding such activities. For example:

• “Verizon was not asked to provide…”

Could mean:

1. Verizon was ordered to provide
2. It was suggested that providing might be a nice gesture
3. Verizon was motivated (whether via enticement or coercion) to provide

The same kind if ambiguity may be found in the definition of “customer phone records.” We who work in IT (Information Technology) are very careful when we define something like what, exactly, constitutes a “customer phone record.”

It may be that what Verizon provided was some subset of a customer phone record, in which case customer data was shared with the NSA (which is the essence of the concern that we have); whether those data are, technically speaking, the precise definition of a “customer phone record” is really quite irrelevant, i.e., ’spin.’

You get the point by now. ‘Spin’ is a given in nearly every publicly-released communication, and ’spin’ is accomplished as much by what is said as by what is not said; as much by what is alluded to as by what is not.

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(note: this comment also appears in the coComment panel at the very bottom of my blog’s home page. unfortunately, the link to the article is incorrect in that panel so that anyone who clicks the link in the coComment panel at the bottom of my page will not find either the article or my comment. my apologies for any confusion that error may have caused; i contacted the folks at coComment about whether, and how, I might correct my mistake but they informed me it isn’t possible at this time. thanks for understanding!)