September 04, 2004

SMS Blocked to Disrupt Disruptions?

Boing-boing passes on report from reader Kevin Slavin accusing T-Mobile of censoring SMS when a group of activists were using the service to coordinate protests during the Republican National Convention. (Activists are increasingly relying on SMS and other flashmob technologies to coordinate work.)

Right around 5:30 or 6, just as things started to heat up around me, I stopped getting SMS, just like that. I thought it was rather suspicious, but was willing to concede that it could be some technology malfunction. There were more SMSes going out than usual, for the region, and I thought maybe it was an overload. It blew any opportunities I had to effectively co-ordinate with the legal, and civil, RNC protests. So now, as it turns out -- say the txtmob people -- it wasn't technology, it was T-Mobile (my now ex-carrier). Highlighted text below, from the txtmob dispatch: "T-Mobile blocked TXTmob messages during a portion of the RNC. "

My only question is, WTF? Since when does T-Mobile decide which messages are ok, and which aren't? What, in my contract with them, specifies that they can decide which messages I am allowed to get? Who told who to block which messages? I'm no lawyer, but those seem like the kinds of questions that lawyers are interested in.

I don't know of any independent verification of this, but it's a worrying possibility. Posted by johndan at September 4, 2004 08:54 PM | TrackBack