Big Brother is at It Again

My friend Scott (not his real name) (and who isn’t me I swear) got a very scary call this past week. On Tuesday, his cell phone service provider, Verizon, called his home phone number. Scott, who lives at school, obviously did not pick up the phone at his house, but his father did. The woman on the other end of the line asked a very strange question: have you been receiving pornographic pictures on your cell phone?

You can imagine Scott’s father’s reaction. First, he was flabbergasted and enraged that someone would suggest such a thing. They finally figured out that the messages were sent to Scott’s phone (he’s on his family’s plan.) Verizon then informed Scott’s father that they would have to hold on to the “evidence” and they were not exactly sure what would be the result of this investigation. Scott may be charged with a crime. Right now it’s all pending. So the final situation is that Scott’s father found out, through his cell phone provider, that his son was being potentially charged with a felony.

Scott’s father did what most people would have done. He called up Scott and proceeded to chastise him and say on more than one occasion how dumb he was. He was also extremely worried about the potential legal problem ahead. Imagine Scott’s surprise to hear from his father, who heard from Verizon, that he knew all about the messages that were sent and now he was potentially going to jail.

Here is Scott’s take on the story. He was talking to a young lady from his hometown who goes to school out of state in South Carolina. They were flirting back and forth, and they exchanged some lewd pictures via text message that they both thought were private. Nobody was forced to do anything, and both were consenting, legal adults. And now, because of that, he is a possible felon.

Can I just say “what the hell is going on?!?!?!?” Where does Verizon get off reading and viewing their subscriber’s text and picture messages? Those things are private. Everyone who has a Verizon account should know that Verizon looks at messages that are sent on their network. I am a Verizon customer as well, and this scares the crap out of me.

I suppose that the reason all of this is legal is because the messages are sent on their network, meaning that they are property of Verizon wireless somehow? I’m not sure. But this news also implies that Verizon actually employs people whose job it is to browse through a random sampling of picture messages and see if they can find anything bad in them. Why would they do that? What’s in it for them?

In this article, (http://news.cnet.com/Police-Blotter-Verizon-forced-to-turn-over-text-messages/2100-1030_3-6221503.html ) the author states that Verizon does in fact keep an archive of all text messages sent and received, in addition to looking though their subscribers’ picture messages. They will also turn their records over to police who do not even have a warrant for the evidence.

This development is very scary. You can certainly believe that I will not send anything even close to being controversial on my phone anymore until this mess is sorted out.