Vice

The concept of “zero rating”—or the process of an internet service provider exempting certain content from broadband usage caps—has been controversial for several years now.

Around 250 bounty hunters and related businesses had access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint customer location data, according to documents obtained by Vice. The documents also show that telecommunication companies sold data intended to be used by 911 operators and first responders to data aggregators, who sold it to bounty hunters. The data was in some cases so accurate that a user could be tracked to specific spots inside a building.

Rep Will Hurd (R-TX) — the only Republican to hold a district that falls along the southern border — is not in favor of a border wall. Instead, he’s partial to the idea of a “digital” wall: a border-wide system of technology such as cameras, sensors, and drones communicating through a fiber optic network to keep the border secure.

In the months leading up to the Federal Communications Commission assault on net neutrality, big telecom and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told anybody who’d listen that killing net neutrality would boost broadband industry investment, spark job creation, and drive broadband into underserved areas at an unprecedented

Earlier in Jan it was reported how T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint were selling cell phone users’ location data that ultimately ended up in the hands of bounty hunters and people unauthorized to handle it. That data trickled down from the telecommunications giants through a complex network of middlemen and data brokers. One of those third parties was Zumigo, a company that gets location data access directly from the telecom companies and then sells it for a profit.