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."
Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Any time something like this happens everyone from the first manager with the authority to do something that refuses all the way up the chain gets held responsible for whatever happens as a result of their refusal to act.
Guy dies, they get held responsible for murder because they chose to not assist the police knowing full well that their actions would cause the death of another human being.
Never going to happen.
They can do that? (Score:1, Interesting)
They can actually turn on your phone, even though you have it switched off? What if the battery is drained?
This is so scary! I want to ditch my cell phone and go back to POTS.
Where was this Verizon? (Score:4, Interesting)
Where was this Verizon when the warrantless wiretaps were going on? They are a business, they have no obligation to help with police work. It may have been nice but it is not necessary.
I wish Verizon had grown these balls much earlier.
E911 Service? (Score:3, Interesting)
Whatever happened to the requirement to provide 911 service to any phone, paid up or not?
Back in the old analog days, the network operators were required to connect any calls to 911, whether the phone had a current account or not. Even after letting my Motorola brick's account lapse, I kept it in the glove compartment for just such an emergency, since analog service has much greater range (and coverage area) than digital (until they turned it off). If this requirement is still in effect, an unpaid phone would still check in with the nearest cell when entering its coverage area and could be tracked. Even if it was blocked from placing or receiving calls. That would seem to be a minimum requirement to support the E911 requirement. Unless the networks have managed to weasel out of yet another law, that is.
Bully for the cops! (Score:5, Interesting)
'I was more concerned for the person's life,' Sheriff Dale Williams said.
Bully for the cops, for a change! The guys who are supposed to protect and serve, who get such a bad rap in recent years, were trying to figure out how to pay a bill for a guy who was trying to off himself. Goddamit but that makes me feel good.
Terms of service (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sure the terms of service clearly state that if you haven't paid your bill you can't get phone access even to save your life.
Re:Terms of service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not murder (Score:2, Interesting)
But manslaughter.
you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
Why not? In this case the will of the company clearly ran contrary to public interest. I would argue that the employee had a clear responsibility to ignore corporate policy and if he got in trouble for it he should be protected and the company levied a rather hefty fine. I think one persons life is worth say... 2% of profit for five years.
Assign one or two of these fines and companies will shape up fast.
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.
Re:Greed tag (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, anyone past the first tier support person should have seen this as an opportunity for some good publicity. They could have issued a press release saying that they turned the guy's phone back on so the police could save him. Then they could have advertised how having their service helps keep people safe. Etc. Etc.
But they didn't.
I don't know what's a worse. Not turning the phone on or running your company so poorly that no one ever thinks of alternative solutions or thinks more than five minutes ahead.
Enjoy your bad publicity, Verizon. You've earned it.
Re:Terms of service (Score:2, Interesting)
The US has the same requirement. Any cell phone must be connected to 911 when dialed, whether it's currently "active" or not.
corporate death penalty (Score:3, Interesting)
Take away their spectrum (Score:5, Interesting)
Right now many of these companies have been granted a public monopoly on RF spectrum. The public had better be getting something in return for this; as soon as we're not, as soon as it's no longer in the public interest to grant exclusive license to broadcast on a given frequency to Verizon, that license ought to go away.
Punishing an employee for obeying corporate policy (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, a corporation is a "legal person" so you can't punish an employee for obeying the will of the company.
No. The corporation's status as a legal person protects share holders. It does not protect employees of the corporation. If I charter the "Mafia Collection Agency" corporation and hire assassins, they can still be punished for murder.
In this particular case, an employee that receives the request from law enforcement has three possible actions:
1. Help, turn the phone on.
2. Ignore or delay the request.
3. Escalate to a supervisor.
#1 may or may not be possible to a customer support representative. #3 is an acceptable action.
The highest level that got a documented request and ignored it should be criminally liable. After a few mid level managers go to jail, nobody would be willing to ignore this type of request. Managers would make sure the CYA and send this up the chain until it got to somebody with common sense.
Capitalism at it's best. (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyone remember the story of an elderly man in the Midwest who died because he could not pay his bill and so the utility company reduced his heat in the middle of winter, causing him to freeze to death?
Re:Simple solution (Score:2, Interesting)
It's unclear from TFA whether the police made a legal request, or simply asked - I suspect the latter.
Sure, I know that in this particular case it seems an arse not to help, and I realise that their motives were money rather than protecting his privacy, but think of more general cases. Not assisting a police officer is not a crime, and I would be very worried of the precedent set by making them liable: "Hey, we'd like to track down this person to see if he's up to no good. No we don't have a warrant. What's that, you've refused? Right, everyone involved in your company will be arrested - and you'll be held criminally liable if this person we're after commits a crime that we could have stopped."
The other point to note is that they didn't refuse, they simply asked for the money. Why not pay it, if it's only $20? I concede it's perhaps making a bit of an arse to demand money up front when time was of utmost important, but again think more generally: isn't it reasonable for the police to compensate when they make demands of phone companies and ISPs?
It's also not like we're talking about someone who say was in an accident. Don't get me wrong, I realise that it's probably best to help people even if they say at the time they don't want it, but one of the consequences of a free society is the freedom not to be found, if the person doesn't want that.
Re:Simple solution (Score:1, Interesting)
Guy dies, they get held responsible for murder because they chose to not assist the police knowing full well that their actions would cause the death of another human being.
You gotta be kidding. The USA is a free country (allegedly). Hindering the police might be obstruction, but you have no obligation to assist the police. At all.
Verizon didn't cause his death... even if the guy had died, it wasn't Verizon's fault it happened. It would have been the guy's fault - his mental illness.
The cops weren't even sure the guy HAD a cellphone with him, and that it was on. After all, the cellphone had already been cut off by Verizon - why take a dead cellphone with you?
You want Verizon to suddenly hand over information to the cops without a warrant?
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the customer service rep - is s/he really heartless or just following company rules to prevent losing his/her job? How many times have we heard stories of 911 operators ignoring calls for help? Being unthinking is not limited to employees of major businesses.
The last thing I'm going to do is defend a giant corporation, but before the nuclear bombers are called in for an air strike, let's all take a breath. I 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.
Cell phone technology is still new, and the capabilities are still being learned. The cell carriers, who many believe should be regulated, must make an effort to prevent situations like this from happening. If events like this happen on a regular basis, the carriers will find themselves heavily regulated, and that will serve no one well. As more and more people eschew landlines in favor of cellular service, carriers need to be proactive in making sure they are ready to help and prevent corporate policies from benefiting the communities they serve.
verizon has a law enforcement compliance dept (Score:3, Interesting)
TFA doesn't state if the police followed proper law enforcment req protocol
for example if they where smart enough to google
verizon wireless law enforcement requests
and read the 800 number that is in the very first result (I won't post the number as it is law enforcement only)
but blah blah blah
(press "1" for general information, press "2" for subpoenas, press "3" for court orders and press "4" for EXIGENT situations)
I assume they want 4 =p or a court order barring success w/ an EXIGENT situation request.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Rescind their business licences and enjoin the upper management from forming or working in another corporation for X years, where X is the years a normal person would be in jail.
Or better yet, rescind corporate personhood, it was a stupid idea then and it's a stupid idea now.
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Interesting)
Cooperating with the police is never illegal (if it was, that would be entrapment). Without a court order or warrant, it is seldom illegal to not comply, either. However, many jurisdictions have Good Samaritan laws that protect those who choose to help, and in some places, provide for penalties for those who refuse to help. It wouldn't be a stretch for a company or it's employees to be held to those laws. One would also have expected the corporation to have tried to minimize exposure to lawsuits, and wrongful death would seem to be more of a risk than breach of privacy (particularly given how often corporations can get away with losing laptops full of customer data).
Re:Terms of service (Score:1, Interesting)
Read your own link. "This only applies to states with a Do Not Disconnect policy in place." This does not apply in all states. MD and VA are two off the top of my head.
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:3, Interesting)
The situation is not as unique as you'd like.
In my two years where I am (I'm a phone jockey for a certain company left unnamed), I've had numerous policemen call in, requesting information "on a stolen computer".
I really cannot give them the information, however, because anyone can call in and say "I am the police. Give me information about _____."
Ideally, the Verizon rep should have known the proper escalation path to get the officers to someone who CAN turn on the phone for law enforcement purposes, be it a fax number, a phone number to a legal group, or dog knows what. Yes, it may take an hour. It may take two. But given the situation, 11-2=9, and 9 hours saved is 9 hours saved.
(In my case, information on a system, or the cases associated with it, can be legally requested via a warrant or subpoena through our legal group. I always offer the fax number, and a case number to the officer, stating -and making sure- that everything he should be in need of is documented right in that case, so they can just rattle that back at him. A legit officer never challenges this, because they understand companies are bound to respect privacy, and they know that people can call in and say they are officers. How are we going to prove it? We don't have a database of every badged officer in the country.)
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Interesting)
http://digg.com/tech_news/T-Mobile_stands_with_Qwest_and_refuses_illegal_NSA_data_mining [digg.com]
But you are probably right about the company execs and contracts thing... I got some of that confused.
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only his life was at stake, but god forbid what if he had killed someone else? What then? This kind of bull should not be tolerated, at all, the police made a simple request to turn on said dudes phone because he could be a hazard to himself (or someone else) so what if dude 'owes' them $20 bucks, it's not going to break their system to turn on his phone for 5 or 10 mins so they can find him, instead 11 fucking hours were wasted, thats rediculous. What do they make in profit a year, $20 bucks is nothing, I could spend that doing just about anything, what I'm saying is that's a drop in the bucket for me, to them that's nothing, it costs them nothing to help out the sheriffs office, hell it even helps them, tax dollars at work right there, how many man hours of work were wasted because of them, they should have to reimburse the office for all that time, what a fucking waste.
Judges can be contacted at any time of the day to authorise a warrant. If it's a matter as important as life and death, the responsibility for efficient process lies on the police and legal system whose job it is to handle emergency situations. Right or wrong, it's not currently the duty of a corporation to provide bureaucratic clauses to cover every instance where police procedures fail.
Re:Not murder (Score:3, Interesting)
In that case, I presume you would support the abolition of prisons and the death penalty?
Re:How do you punish a corporation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that that's out of the way, Verizon Wireless DOES have policies outlined in their "Methods and Procedures" (documents telling agents what to do in X situation) for this circumstance. In fact, when an agent receives a call from someone stating they are a police officer that agent is required to immediately transfer the call (cold transfer, IE: agent transfers and doesn't introduce the officer to the other line) to a special department that is under VZW's legal department (same speed dial number). I've actually had a call similar to this. I don't know if the account was suspended for non-payment, but I received a call from a police officer needing to locate an individual that had been reported missing.
I warm transferred the call (I was honestly nervous as hell because I knew someone's life could be in danger). Instead of just transferring the call, I stayed on the line until I got the agent from that department on the line.
According to the M&Ps, those agents are supposed to do ANYTHING to assist the police in locating a missing person. If that means reconnecting the line, they are supposed to do that.
What this sounds like is that the agent who received the call didn't know that they were supposed to transfer the call to that specialty team and instead tried to handle it themselves. That agent will probably be out of a job very shortly.
So no, this wasn't something that happened because of a corporate policy, this is something that happened because the agent who received the call didn't know what to do and didn't properly follow the corporate policy.
Re:Not murder (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree totally. Verizon screwed up, but Sprint will kill you with billing.
I was a Sprint customer once. I was a happy customer for several years. Then they had an error. I was charged $300 over for "roaming". During that period, I never left the city limits where I live. I drove about 10 miles to work and back, with excursions to the grocery store, 1/2 mile from my house. It was a boring period, but I was busy with work. In my haste to pay the bills that month, I just wrote out all the checks and sent them off, and overlooked the overcharge. The next month I was charged $300 again for "roaming". I called. I disputed. They wouldn't listen. They claimed that during the month, I roamed for X hours in another city, about 100 miles away. I paid the amount I owed, without the overage. Now the 3rd bill came in, again with a $300 overage. I pitched a huge fit. I called many many times, and tried to get the charges removed. They wouldn't do it. Over the course of about a week my phone was disconnected because I refused to pay the overages. I continued to call to get it corrected. The insisted I was in the city 100 miles away. Finally, I was told by a slightly more friendly CSR that tomorrow the bill was being sent to collections. I had made a huge effort to make my credit perfect, I didn't want to have any new or bad marks on it. I told them to cancel the account. I had to pay all the "roaming" charges plus an early disconnect fee. Like I said, I had been a customer for years with no changes to my plan, but they considered it an "early disconnect" for unexplained reasons. So, I spent a lot of money to keep it from showing up on my credit history as a negative mark.
A coworker knew a sales rep at Nextel. Most of the people in the company had Nextel phones, and at the time you had to be in the same group to use the 2-way feature (which sucked). I was happy with the bill and the service. Over the next few years, I had a total of 5 lines, for myself, my girlfriend, her daughter, and two friends. The friends couldn't get their own phone service without a huge deposit, so they paid me, and we all were happy. This lasted for several years.
When the Sprint/Nextel merger was announced, I talked to a Nextel CSR who assured me that the bad billing practices by Sprint wouldn't start be reflected at Nextel, as they were to maintain their own separate companies despite the merger. A few months after the merger, my first $300 over charge showed up. I called, I disputed, the refused to fix it. During that billing period, I had moved, and there simply was no Nextel service in the area. I left the phone plugged in on my desk for about a week, and never saw service. I then unplugged it and let it die. I got another bill with $300 in roaming charges. I explained the situation. The refused to fix it. The final bill came in, and I told them, "The phone is dead. Sitting on my desk. The battery has been dead for weeks. It hasn't been used. I refuse to pay this." They didn't show any minutes used, but they still showed the roaming. At this point, I wasn't entertained. I went and bought a Verizon Wireless phone, knowing this wouldn't be resolved. They sent it to collections. I was able to negotiate for a reduced bill, but it shows as a bad spot on my credit.
No, unless you have lots of money to give to a corporation who doesn't care for anything but overcharging, don't go with Sprint/Nextel. You'll be ok for the first few months. Then they'll rape you, and keep raping you. Even if your phone is turned off and useless.
I was very happy with Verizon. They may have screwed up this incident, but in general they're ok. I don't like that they get you for "extras" that should be free, like unlocking the GPS ability in GPS enabled phones, but if you just use the phone as a phone, they're ok. I don't my own Verizon phone right now, because of the economy, or more importantly my lack of money, but when things get better, it's very likely I'll go back to them. My work phone is through Verizon, and I'm happy with the service itself. If they had billing irregularities like Sprint/Nextel, we wouldn't have them right now.
Re:Not murder (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
The problem comes in if you care about your credit rating. These companies report directly to the major credit bureaus, and they have you over a barrel. It doesn't matter if they're lying or incompetent ... if you don't pay they knock your rating down a few points. It's wrong, sure, and the Feds really should go after them for this since it's hurting a lot of people. But there it is.
I had a similar experience (well, several similar experiences) with our local telco when SBC bought them out. They were great up 'til that point. All of a sudden, my landlines go off. All of them. So I call up what was now being passed off as "customer service" and was told that there was no problem on my account, that my bill was current. I asked the lady again, why are my phones off!, and was told that they weren't, the problem must be in my house, and they'd have to schedule a service call. So the tech comes out, finds nothing wrong other than that there's no dial tone, and tells me I must not have paid my bill (??!!!.) So I call back, and I'm told that maybe I should talk so someone in collections. Collections! Well, so I do, and it took this person three days to figure out that it was my father's phone bill, from his old house. He passed away in '96, and I guess the remaining balance never got paid. It was also in his name, under his Social Security number. Suddenly, by magic, days after the SBC takeover, and it was my SS number on his account, and they wanted me to pay some $300 plus a couple grand in late fees. Bastards. My attorney took care of it, but that was just insane not to mention criminal.
Bloodsuckers. I don't know if it's just incompetence, or outright fraud, but either way it really pisses me off.