Free! Government! Cellphones!

[longknife]

Yes, siree, you too can have one, as long as you’re an undocumented alien, at least according to this website:

The Undocumented Immigrant’s Guide to Free Government Cell Phones @ Undocumented Immigrant?s Guide to Free Government Cell Phones

Are you an undocumented immigrant who needs a cell phone? Here’s good news. We’ve just published The Undocumented Immigrant’s Guide to Free Government Cell Phones.

Much to our surprise, there are no regulations that prohibit undocumented immigrants from getting these phones.

Read more @ Free! Government! Cellphones! | Fausta's Blog

 

[waltky]

NSA Tracking 5 Billion Cell Phone Locations A Day...

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show
December 4,`13 - The National Security Agency gathers location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones.

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable. The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool.

The NSA does not target Americans’ location data by design, but the agency acquires a substantial amount of information on the whereabouts of domestic cellphones “incidentally,” a legal term that connotes a foreseeable but not deliberate result. One senior collection manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity but with permission from the NSA, said “we are getting vast volumes” of location data from around the world by tapping into the cables that connect mobile networks globally and that serve U.S. cellphones as well as foreign ones. Additionally, data are often collected from the tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad with their cellphones every year.

In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs that have been disclosed since June. Analysts can find cellphones anywhere in the world, retrace their movements and expose hidden relationships among the people using them. U.S. officials said the programs that collect and analyze location data are lawful and intended strictly to develop intelligence about foreign targets.

Robert Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, said “there is no element of the intelligence community that under any authority is intentionally collecting bulk cellphone location information about cellphones in the United States.” The NSA has no reason to suspect that the movements of the overwhelming majority of cellphone users would be relevant to national security. Rather, it collects locations in bulk because its most powerful analytic tools — known collectively as CO-TRAVELER — allow it to look for unknown associates of known intelligence targets by tracking people whose movements intersect.

MORE

 

[Political Junky]

Didn't the free phone thing start under Bush?

 

[Seawytch]

Didn't the free phone thing start under Bush?

No, Reagan.

 

[depotoo]

Didn't the free phone thing start under Bush?

No, Reagan.

actually Clinton is the one that expanded it in 1996 to include wireless (it originally was home phone service that was for emergency use-

The federal program wasn’t started by President Obama. It dates back to 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act did a number of things, including increasing internet access to doctors and patients in rural hospitals (for consults with specialists); subsidizing internet and phone coverage for schools and libraries and providing free or subsidized coverage for families who can’t afford it so that they have links to emergency and government services. The Act was not taxpayer funded… exactly. Taxpayers do pay for coverage but not via federal income taxes. Instead, the Act “mandated the creation of the universal service fund (USF) into which all telecommunications providers are required to contribute a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues.” So that little fee on your phone bill labeled USF? That’s what you’re paying for.

Crazy For "Obama Phones" - But Are They For Real? - Forbes

 

[Seawytch]

Didn't the free phone thing start under Bush?

No, Reagan.

actually Clinton is the one that expanded it in 1996 to include wireless (it originally was home phone service that was for emergency use-

The federal program wasn’t started by President Obama. It dates back to 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act did a number of things, including increasing internet access to doctors and patients in rural hospitals (for consults with specialists); subsidizing internet and phone coverage for schools and libraries and providing free or subsidized coverage for families who can’t afford it so that they have links to emergency and government services. The Act was not taxpayer funded… exactly. Taxpayers do pay for coverage but not via federal income taxes. Instead, the Act “mandated the creation of the universal service fund (USF) into which all telecommunications providers are required to contribute a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues.” So that little fee on your phone bill labeled USF? That’s what you’re paying for.

Crazy For "Obama Phones" - But Are They For Real? - Forbes

Check your facts again.

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/10/the-obama-phone/

 

[depotoo]

No, Reagan.

actually Clinton is the one that expanded it in 1996 to include wireless (it originally was home phone service that was for emergency use-

The federal program wasn’t started by President Obama. It dates back to 1996, as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The Act did a number of things, including increasing internet access to doctors and patients in rural hospitals (for consults with specialists); subsidizing internet and phone coverage for schools and libraries and providing free or subsidized coverage for families who can’t afford it so that they have links to emergency and government services. The Act was not taxpayer funded… exactly. Taxpayers do pay for coverage but not via federal income taxes. Instead, the Act “mandated the creation of the universal service fund (USF) into which all telecommunications providers are required to contribute a percentage of their interstate and international end-user telecommunications revenues.” So that little fee on your phone bill labeled USF? That’s what you’re paying for.

Crazy For "Obama Phones" - But Are They For Real? - Forbes

Check your facts again.

The Obama Phone?

are you stating Reagan included wireless when wireless wasn't even available?