Verizon Tells Cops "Your Money Or Your Life" 593
Mike writes "A 62-year-old man had a mental breakdown and ran off after grabbing several bottles of pills from his house. The cops asked Verizon to help trace the man using his cellphone, but Verizon refused, saying that they couldn't turn on his phone because he had an unpaid bill for $20. After an 11-hour search (during which time the sheriff's department was trying to figure out how to pay the bill), the man was found, unconscious. 'I was more concerned for the person's life,' Sheriff Dale Williams said. 'It would have been nice if Verizon would have turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes, just long enough to try and find the guy. But they would only turn it on if we agreed to pay $20 of the unpaid bill.' Score another win for the Verizon Customer Service team."
What about E911? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't even contractless cell phones have to support calling 911?
If so, doesn't that mean they are always talking to nearby tower(s) just as much as any other cell phone and thus just as easily trackable?
Idiot Police imho (Score:5, Insightful)
"After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment."
Why did it take the police 11 hours to decide to pay the $20 dollar bill? If someones life was likely at stake, $20 out of my own pocket is a pretty small price to pay to locate him.
Frankly I'm siding with Verizon. Good for Verizon! (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets see, Verizon decided to not allow law enforcement to TRACK a customer. That is a GOOD THING.
It's a cell phone, not an invasion of privacy device used on a whim by any police officer at will.
Re:Frankly I'm siding with Verizon. Good for Veriz (Score:5, Insightful)
Except... (Score:3, Insightful)
This was Verizon asking for payment for a late bill, nothing more, nothing less.
Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
But manslaughter.
Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
Re:Simple solution (Score:1, Insightful)
At which point, there will be a corporate memo to the effect of "If the police call asking for anything, tell them to call back when they have a court order, then hang up. Do not discuss anything else with them."
If any cooperation with the police ends at a level where no one has any authority (ie, at the tier-one helpdesk folks) then the managers asses are covered. Their legal department can probably draft such a memo / corporate policy in such a way that will minimize the company's risk.
Of course, the side effect of such a policy would be that using cell phones to locate lost kids / teens / wives / etc will drop to zero without court orders. Just a little collateral damage, I guess.
Re:Idiot Police imho (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate death penalty: revocation of corporate charter, seizure of all corporate assets.
Probably a bit too stiff for this instance, but if a company shows a repeated "screw the community" ethic, why should the community suffer its continued existence?
The major problem I have is as little as I trust large companies, I trust the government to not abuse such a power even less.
How do you punish a corporation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fines. Very large fines. Verizon sounds here like they would have complied with the request had the bill been paid. Hell, if I was a Verizon tech and I knew the request was legitimate, I'd have paid the damn $20 to get the system to activate the phone, if that's what it took.
Verizon should have to forfeit to the government all profit their shareholders would have received in dividends or share increases for 3 months. We'll see if they ever pull this shit again. Someone's fucking life was at stake! Who cares if the guy was crazy, or an asshole, of owed them money - dead men can't pay bills! Help your customer survive to outlive that service contract, if for no better reason such as, you know, saving someone's life! Fucking idiots.
I don't understand this unwritten law that telcos must all act like they have some kind of mental handicap.
Re:Frankly I'm siding with Verizon. Good for Veriz (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right?
a. Verizon didn't decide not to help the police due to some great respect for civil liberties.
They wanted money. Period. They made it clear, apparently, that as soon as the cops coughed up the $$$, they would get the info. Why are you applauding Verizon?
b. Police have broad powers when a life is threatened. Very broad. They need a search warrant to go into my house. However, if they hear a scream and a gunshot, they don't need anything other than the soles of their feet as they cheerfully kick in my door and swarm in. They are safeguards against abuse of this power. Although it happens, judges frown when officers are caught abusing it and tend to toss any illegally gathered evidence out the window. Several companies have a policy of following emergency requests with paperwork stating what was done and why. It's highly likely that if the cops were making stuff up in an excuse to scam information out of Verizon it would have come back to bite them.
No, sometimes the simplest explanation is the right one. Verizon just sucks.
Re:E911 Service? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good for Verizon! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad for Verizon.
They didn't do it becasue of your rights, they did it because they guy owed 20 dollars. Had he paid they would ahve given them the information.
While you post is generally correct* that's not the issue here.
*There are instances when law enforcement officers do not need a warrant, valid reasons.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
But manslaughter.
Thing is, how do you punish a corporation for manslaughter? Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
Oh yes you can. Look at the Enron folks. You have a legal duty to refuse an illegal request. If they fire you for obeying a police request, you will have a line of ambulance chasers waiting to "help" you.
Re:Bully for the cops! (Score:4, Insightful)
Most officers of the law are like that.
It's any public job where 99,999 out of 100,000 goes perfectly fines all the time. 1 things goes wrong, and everyone gets all stupid.
Large, bureaucratic structures at work (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a classic example of strict and rigid rules laid down without any sensible leeway, and how it backfires. A lot of companies actually have a "bible" with the correct procedure for every standard situation. ISO 9001 and other similar standards actually support this behaviour.
I can well imagine how this happened. First, there is some flowchart that dictates how and when who may turn what phone on and off under what circumstances. My guess is that some relevant part reads something like "do not turn phone on unless bill is paid". Furthermore the "executing" levels of the company (i.e. the grunts doing the work who are disallowed to think for themselves) most likely got directives to stick to the rules by the letter or face consequences (i.e. start sending out resumes, you have 2 weeks).
I pity only the poor guy who actually had to decline the request. Because he had the choice between shooting himself and finding a beam strong enough to handle his weight plus rope. If he activated the phone, he would have broken the all sacred and holy document telling him how to do his job and be fired. Now, he didn't and sure enough he'll be made the scapegoat for the blunder of a manager who created the rules without thinking of emergencies like this.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never worked at a place in the US doing tech support or customer service where we couldn't make simple exception (not even needing manager approval). Turn the guys phone on for a day and put a note in there that officer so and so from the police department needed help finding him because he was suicidal - no-one should get fired for that.
That's actually the big problem with handing off all our support and customer service to India - having trained them, working with them etc (and even training my replacement) - if its not on the flow chart card they have no way of helping you.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also possible by ignoring the officers request the employee committed a crime. Obstruction of justice comes to mind, depraved indifference perhaps, though I am sure there are others.
Not obeying an officer's request, when they don't have a warrant or otherwise legal right to that information, should be a crime? I hope not.
We can debate whether it was a good thing or not in this particular case all we like, but I would be very worried of the precedent of making it illegal to not do as a policemen says. Suddenly everyone who tries to refuse access to the police would be breaking the law, even if the police had no authority to get that information!
Re:Not murder (Score:4, Insightful)
You have a legal duty to refuse an illegal request.
Wait - without a warrant, which is the illegal request?
(Whether it might have ethically been a good thing to comply or not is beside the point, if we're talking about the legality of requests.)
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet that at some point during those 11 hours, somebody offered to pay the $20. Why didn't they take it?
Re:What about E911? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:3, Insightful)
OK HOLD ON (Score:2, Insightful)
So this guy's phone is off right?
I sure as hell don't carry around my disabled phones with me so their request would have been entirely useless.
Also, if the radio was the carrier can still find it. Like others said 911 is still always active on the phone regardless of service. This is why its suggested to leave a phone and a charging cable in your trunk in the event of an emergency.
Seems everyone is making a big deal out of a stupid request. It should be "Moron cops don't understand technology, make idiotic request. Thinks cell phones allow you to track people even if they don't have it on them."
Re:Not murder (Score:2, Insightful)
I think there's a difference between "you cause someone's death by accident" and "someone dies where you could have helped, but didn't". In the latter case, the person has no obligation to help, it was only an extra means that could have helped, and there's no way of knowing if it would've saved such a person anyway.
I would be worried if simply "not helping" constitutes manslaughter, unless perhaps the person was entrusted with looking after the person (e.g., a doctor - but even there, manslaughter would only be used for actively killing someone by mistake, and not for simply being unable to keep them alive).
Have there been any court cases that suggest otherwise?
Re:Simple solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Those were never necessary. We (meaning the citizens of this country, the police, and even the Federal Government), were lied to by the telephone companies, which refused to admit that any such record-keeping ever took place. Until a writer for an electronics magazine kind of accidentally wound up with a copy of the repair manual for one of the record-keeping machines. He realized the implications of it, made it public and forced their hand. The telcos even sued him to try to keep it quiet, unsuccessfully.
How many kidnappings, murders, and robberies went unsolved because the phone companies lied to everybody? I have often wondered, and I bet it's a great many.
And you know why? Their "justification" for telling everyone they did not keep records was that it was too expensive for them to send everybody an itemized bill listing every local call!
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
Forced operation as a non-profit for the duration of the sentence?
The major problem I have is as little as I trust large companies, I trust the government to not abuse such a power even less.
If government is trusted to hand out the actual death penalty to living human beings defended by draftee lawyers, why not to large corporations that are surely better represented?
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to try very hard not to flame you here, because you're trying to be the voice of reason.
But you're talking bullshit. It doesn't matter if it's never happened before. There's a first time for everything. They could have set a precedent. As for "not being able to." That's what the managers are there for. There is no way on this planet that there wasn't someone higher up the chain to talk to for 11 hours. And those managers routinely waive overages on minutes, or reconnect fees, or shipping charges on new handsets, and give out hundreds in freebies every day to keep customers "happy." If the manager couldn't pull his head out of his ass to waive $20 to try and help save a life, the company doesn't deserve its customer-base. They wouldn't even have needed to waive it. Just send a temporary reconnect.
20 dollars vs 11 hours x number of police officers (Score:3, Insightful)
This makes no sense. Why not pay the 20 bucks for an instant find, instead of what was clearly more than 20 bucks for several police officers to meandor about trying to find him?
Not sure how I feel about Verizon on this one - it's no less reasonable to expect police to pay for an account to turn it on than if the police had come in and requested a phone for themselves. But the police themselves in this case were idiots.
11hours and they couldn't find a judge (Score:4, Insightful)
Or Sheriff Dale Williams got in a huff because the damn civilians didn't lay down and do what they are told. I'm sure the 20 dollar story that the sheriff told is the absolute truth and nothing but the truth..... right.
11 hours and they couldn't find a judge to issue a warrant.
Personally I'm glad Verizon refused to track the phone without a warrant regardless of the expressed reason. I don't think we have all the information, and I doubt the parties involved will ever release the documented facts.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
You should not be so blindly anti-corporate. I'm as anti-corporate as anybody, but in this case Verizon did the right thing. The 62 year old, crazy and suicidal as he was, had commited no crime and did not represent a threat to society at large. He had every right to grab a bottle of pills and run off, just like his family had every right to attempt to chase him down and calm him down before he does something foolish.
Enlisting the help of the police to find a missing person is fine, and a good use of public services.
Forcing a phone company to track down a customer (breaching contract or no) just because the police said so? Hell no. You don't want ISPs giving up personal information just because the RIAA subpoena it, well this has even LESS legal standing than that.
Honestly, had Verizon activated his phone and tracked him down, the crazy man would be in the right to sue the pants off Verizon, and he could probably win.
And you people are talking about sanctioning Verizon for protecting the man's privacy? Granted, it was definitely not for altruistic reasons, but frankly I don't want the police to ever have the right to call up the phone company and have them track me down without a warrant for my arrest (not that I should ever be under suspicion, but you never know).
And while you're attacking the phone company for not budging on the phone deactivation for a mear $20, bear in mind that neither the police nor the family was apparently willing to cough up the $20 to have the account unlocked.
Seems to me that the worst you can say about Verizon here is that they suck as much as everybody else involved. Maybe if this guy's family wasn't harassing him he wouldn't have lost it, you never know.
Re:What about E911? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, if his account was disconnected due to non-payment, he likely didn't even have his phone with him.
Re:Not murder (Score:2, Insightful)
If you read it, that's exactly what Verizon requested.
Neither the police nor the man's family was willing to pay $20 to save his life. All Verizon asked for was $20 to reactivate the phone, $20 wasn't the bill, it was just a portion. If you'll note, even the summary represents this as Verizon holding the man hostage (nowhere NEAR the truth of the matter). Just look up at the titlebar on your browser window.
So nobody felt this guy was worth $20, neither Verizon, nor the police and family.
Why is everybody hating on Verizon so much? I wish I could expect better critical thinking and objective analysis from the slashdot crowd, but too often we are just as bad as the general masses.
Maybe this guy wasn't so crazy after all, if his family didn't even care to spend $20 to find him.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:2, Insightful)
> Fines. Very large fines.
Are you really that hopelessly naive?
Fines, like increased taxes do not harm big corporations... but instead harm customers who end up footing the bill in the end, after all, where exactly do you think the corporations get the money from to pay the fines & taxes in the first place?
Seems like the police did the wrong thing (Score:2, Insightful)
If turning this guy's cell phone on was worth $20, doing it effectively means somebody is going to be out $20. Why should Verizon be the one to foot that bill? The police required this man's phone service to be on, so they should have paid to turn his phone service on. Why the hell not?
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:2, Insightful)
How the heck did this get flagged as Insightful?
I RTFA, and there is no indication that this went any further than the idiot operator on the other end of the line. Although it is emotionally satisfying to believe that some evil "corporation" suddenly became self-aware and made this decision independently of any humans, in the end it was some employee who decided that the man's life was worth less than $20 and/or his/her own job.
Whoever made this decision should be criminally prosecuted for failing to assist the authorities in this matter. Sorry, I know that the whole "corporations are evil" bit is a popular meme on Slashdot, but those of us older than 17 realize that corporations actually run by this odd mammal known as "people", and these mammals need to be held responsible for their own actions.
And the Socialists come crawling out of the cracks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:5, Insightful)
think the situation is just so unique, there is no procedure for the police to reach the right person to override problems like this. If this were a landline, there are certainly contact people who can be reached to assist with a police investigation.
Exactly the problem, they were dealing with someone who isn't empowered to help.
What all major carriers need to do is create an "emergency services" department that is empowered by executive management to make decisions that run contrary to company policy when it makes sense to do so. Then they give that number to all call center staff who will forward calls like this immediately when they realize that they cannot help.
Re:corporate death penalty (Score:3, Insightful)
There's plenty of law on this already. (Score:3, Insightful)
Neither you nor the power company, for instance, are required to give free power to oldsters who will freeze to death in the winter or die of heatstroke in the summer absent heating and air conditioning. You and they aren't even required to give free power to somebody in an iron lung. As a public utility the power company IS required to give them power, even reduced rate power, WHEN arrangements are made to pay appropriately for it. This stuff has come up over and over again.
Similarly with the phone company.
Cops said: "Turn the phone on so we can find him."
Phone company said "Sure. We'll do it for $20 - much less than his outstanding balance - as soon as you tell where to send the bill."
Cops said: "We won't pay."
Family said: "We won't pay."
Phone company said: "Call us when you figure out where to send the bill. We're all set to push the button."
Fifth amendment: "... nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
The cops were trying to steal service. The phone company knew damn well that if they turned on the phone without the necessary promise to pay they'd never see the money.
Now the media are dumping on the phone company - in an obvious attempt to let such attempts to steal service succeed in the future. IMHO the blame should be placed where it belongs: On the police department and/or the family (to the extent that they should have paid up as part of THEIR obligations). Not on the phone company (which would then be drafted into funding a never-ending set of demands for free service whenever someone decided the situation was some sort of emergency).
Re:Take away their spectrum (Score:3, Insightful)
Right now many of these companies have been granted a public monopoly on RF spectrum
Umm, they weren't "granted" it, they paid billions of dollars for it......
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Insightful)
Seizure of all assets? And if the company is, say, 50% owned by public shareholders, you'll just screw the public by taking their money? I guess you're willing to steal money from peoples' retirement funds.
Re:Mandatory assistance (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Take away their spectrum (Score:5, Insightful)
They are regulated by the FCC and clearly their lack of cooperation in finding this guy was not in the public interest. The fine print in the Code of Federal regulations does require licensees to cooperate in a legitimate emergency.
It sounds like their customer service people were more concerned about the little red box on a computer screen than in helping the sheriff. The article does not go into enough detail on if an escalation procedure was requested for or offered. No matter what time of the day it is, there is always someone available with enough authority to turn the service on temporarily. It is not as if the sheriff was asking for a service restoration so the guy could make a five hour cell call to Bangladesh.
Verizon should be burned for how they handled this. Maybe someone needs to make a stink with their elected officials or to file a formal complaint with the FCC.
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Insightful)
Good luck with that (Score:3, Insightful)
Afraid that is not the case in real life and real law. If you are aware of someone in distress, can help but don't, then you are legally liable. Be very wary of living by your advice, not only would any religion in the world condemn you to hell, you could easily find yourself in a courtroom with a jury who would never dare rule in your favor since that would be admitting they themselves would not help their fellow man.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
I sure showed them!!
Now I feel like I'm Amish and should ride a horse and buggy to my next job interview....jeez, sorry...I only have one phone #, and its always ringing in the same place, all alone in a room without me. Like a Cave Man.
The good news is I don't have to screen my messages anymore, I don't have to pay for minutes that you already paid for five times, and my sperm count is rising.... the brain tumor has gone away.... and I can drive a car without crashing.
Can you hear me now? Nope. I'm all alone. And Sprint and Verizon and Metro and AT&T can just KMA and sell someone else their overpriced electrons and imaginary minutes.... But not me!!.... Not in my cave!!.... Not in the previous century, not at that price... I'd rather talk to people I can see. I may be a dinosaur, but I wasn't born.... recently!.
Just say no to cellular phone companies.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Insightful)
Excuse me, but why are you paying money you don't owe, when they're the ones committing fraud? Isn't there some agency in your country that investigates and fights this sort of fraud? Aren't there any media willing to give lots of attention to companies screwing over honest customers for hundreds of dollars?
You should have nailed them to a cross, publicly shamed them and sued them for everything they're worth. Instead you're rewarding them for their crime.
Seriously, hundreds of dollars? I'd make an issue out of this for tens of dollars. Why pay through the nose to reward someone who criminally screws you over?
I'm with Verizon (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, at least in principle. If you're going to own part of a corporation, you should be to at least some degree responsible for its actions. Why not? Who else is going to be?
Re:Not murder (Score:2, Insightful)
> who has the least shred of authority to go off policy at many companies.
> The people who answer the phones either do not know who that would be
> or are trained to claim that. That too is part of the policy and procedures.
At a large company, this is really the only way it's possible to operate; otherwise the people with the authority to make or bend policy would be inundated with infinite numbers of phone calls. (And you do NOT want to see what would happen if the regular people answering the phone were empowered to change policy every time they hear a sob story.) However, it *ought* to be possible to follow the chain of escalation upward and eventually reach someone with authority.
> That's why phone numbers that ring the executive offices are so popular
> on sites like the consumerist and why shortly after those numbers leak,
> they get re-directed to customer "service".
No, that's just because of the scale issue I was talking about: if every customer with a grievance could reach the executive offices directly, they all *would*, and the executives would have to spend thousands of hours per week handling petty grievances. You can't run a large company (or any large organization) that way. There are a *lot* more people answering the phones than there are executives, for a reason.
It is arguable that the top execs should each spend a little time each week on the phones, so that they can hear a sample of the kinds of things customers are calling about. But it would just be a sample. There's no way they have time to handle every call.
Re:Not murder (Score:4, Insightful)
At a large company, this is really the only way it's possible to operate; otherwise the people with the authority to make or bend policy would be inundated with infinite numbers of phone calls.
While I fully recognize that they can hardly escalate every call, surely if a law enforcement official is on the phone and tells you it is ACTUALLY a life or death situation, there should be SOME procedure to escalate the call to someone who actually can alter the policy!
Further, if a company doesn't have some sort of policy to escalate to someone who has the authority to go off script in the event of a massive screw up then it deserves to spend some time as a non-profit.
As much chaos as it might be if regular employees could all make it up as they go, when they have no authority to go off policy or even to escalate when the situation isn't explicitly covered in policy, you effectively make each and every one of those people a de-facto cargo cult manager as they cram square situations into round policies with a hammer in order to know what to do.
Looked at another way, if the regular people have no power to go off policy and are not allowed to escalate the matter to someone who does, every corporate call center becomes a sort of Milgram experiment [wikipedia.org]. While the harm to others committed in the call center doesn't likely rise to the level of torture, it is a very real harm committed against society at large every day. If corporations faced a very real potential to suffer a fate as bad as death or a prison sentence (as far as a corporation is concerned), they would be more careful to do the right thing.
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Insightful)
Hundreds of thousands of dollars for small claims court? Be realistic.
Besides that, do you honestly thing sprint/nextel would actually go to court over that tiny amount? They would settle. Even though they have lawyers on payroll it still costs them time to fight you in court. Their lawyers don't sit idle waiting for cases.
Oh, and your apartment nonsense? You clearly don't understand how credit reporting works. You can request the mark be removed. If the company no long exists as you claim, it will be removed and not put back since they're not there to dispute your claim that it's inaccurate.
You need to take some time to understand how the credit reporting system actually works...or your whole post is fabricated.