Thursday, November 30, 2006

Another FCC abuse

One of the services you support when you pay your monthly phone bill is the TTY service for the hearing disabled. A news report appearing on the Nov. 29 "Today Show" has exposed a terrible abuse of this much needed service (see the video).

This service for the deaf and hearing disabled is poorly regulated. Because it uses the Internet, anyone can type in a message. And the operators who receive those messages must, by law, repeat every word as it is written, to the indicated party. Lastly, it is against the law to retain records of any of these messages. Privacy issues.

Watch the video....

As a librarian who works with E-Rate, and deals with privacy issues, filtering, etc., etc., (you librarians know exactly what I'm saying), I am amazed at the absence of accountability by the FCC for the abuses of this service. And I pity the officials who will be getting phone calls.... Ha. No, I don't!

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