Copps, Politicians, Privacy Groups Still Angry after Verizon Flips NARAL Text Message Ban
Verizon Wireless’s ban of a NARAL Pro-Choice America text-messaging program was an “incorrect interpretation of a dusty internal policy,” the carrier said Thursday, approving NARAL’s planned SMS alerts. But the ban’s reversal may not have cooled outrage about Verizon’s original decision. House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and FCC Commissioner Michael Copps slammed Verizon’s interference with consumers’ ability to choose the mobile content they can receive.
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Verizon rejected NARAL’s application for the SMS short code Wednesday. NARAL fired back with a letter and petition, but controversy exploded when the New York Times revealed Verizon denied the application due the subject’s “controversial or unsavory” nature.
A day later, Verizon changed its position. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam sent NARAL President Nancy Keenan a letter accepting NARAL’s application. “The short code is now operational,” he said. Enclosed was the company’s public statement. “We have fixed the process that led to this isolated incident,” it said, explaining that the rejection was based on a policy “designed to ward against… anonymous hate messaging and adult materials sent to children” and was “developed before text messaging protection such as spam filters adequately protected customers from unwanted messages.”
“Verizon’s latest statement does not identify any substantive change in policy,” Dingell said. “Reports of Verizon’s actions raise troubling questions about a network operator’s ability to determine what its customers receive and from whom. I am particularly concerned by its ability and apparent willingness to interfere when customers choose to receive legitimate and legal communications from an organization… I ask Verizon to decisively state that it will no longer discriminate against any legal content its customers request from any organization.”
Copps said in a statement the NARAL incident is a good argument for net neutrality and shows the “folly” of reclassifying various forms of communications to no longer fall under Title II of the Communications Act. “If text messaging were still treated as a Title II service, common carrier regulation would have prevented these troubling events,” he said.
“This incident illustrates the danger of allowing a handful of telecommunications behemoths to become content gatekeepers,” Copps added. “It highlights the need for strong net neutrality rules. Americans should have the right to send and receive political messages without first seeking permission from one of the nation’s largest cell phone companies.”
“Let’s hope Verizon has learned a lesson today,” Keenan said in a NARAL response. “Citizen participation is neither ‘unsavory’ nor ‘controversial.'” After the story appeared late Wednesday, NARAL was “deluged with calls” from outraged Americans, she said. “We should take great solace in this initial victory, but we must remain vigilant.”
AT&T said it allowed NARAL to send text messages. “We provided NARAL with a short code which is consistent with our policy,” a spokeswoman said. T-Mobile declined comment. Sprint Nextel didn’t immediately return phone calls.
Privacy groups aren’t buying a claim in Verizon’s statement that the carrier has “great respect for this free flow of ideas and will continue to protect the ability to communicate broadly through our messaging service.” “Instant replay is not the way to guarantee the rights of Americans to communicate freely over telecommunications networks,” said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. “You cannot have unfettered communications by having the telephone company review each decision whenever a controversial issue is raised. A text message like this one alerting NARAL supporters to act quickly on a pending political issue is useless after hours of delay by the telephone company referees.”
Verizon’s NARAL block shows the need for net neutrality legislation that would ensure “telephone and cable companies cannot impose their will over the Internet or any other telecommunications medium,” Sohn said. The American Civil Liberties Union agreed. “If private companies can control what we see, hear, and say over ’their’ networks, in a world that runs on the Internet, free speech is lost,” said Marvin Johnson, ACLU legislative counsel. The NARAL ban is not the first time carriers have attacked free speech, said Free Press’s Josh Silver. “Verizon and AT&T cannot be trusted to safeguard basic American freedoms,” he said. “Every time one of these phone companies is caught red-handed… they claim it was a one-time glitch. But how many mistakes does it take before we admit there’s a bigger problem here?”