NEW YORK (CBS) ― A former Verizon technician racked up $220,000 in phone-sex calls by tapping into the land lines of nearly 950 customers, authorities charged on Tuesday.

Joseph Vaccarelli, 45, of Nutley, NJ, made approximately 5,000 calls, resulting in 45,000 minutes of call time, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said in a news release.

Vaccarelli placed the calls in about 30 municipalities in Bergen County, according to the release.

Verizon estimated that out of a 40-week period, Vaccarelli spent 15 weeks talking on 900 chat lines, authorities alleged.

But I disagree with my esteemed colleague Kit Eaton at Gizmodo on one thing: AT&T's network is indeed the iPhone's weak spot. At least 50 percent of the U.S. population lives in an area not served by AT&T 3G. Even David Pogue's iPhone musical called out AT&T service quality as a minus. Verizon's EVDO network — which reaches 80 percent of Americans, per the cheat sheet — would be a much better match. Someday.

Verizon picked Google because no one uses Microsoft search. The mobile ad market will hit $244 million this year, which isn't much, but almost everyone's convinced GPS-enabled mobile search is the next Google's next frontier. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told CNBC's Jim Cramer the market will eventually grow to $50 billion. (Photo by bragadocchio)

The Qwest deal follows on a larger contract signed on behalf of Verizon employees by the CWA, also under threat of strike. "That day, with the strike deadline looming, the company started bargaining a lot more seriously," CWA spokesman Jeff Miller said of the earlier negotiations in a phone call last week. But even by adding call-center employees, the CWA has their work cut out for them expanding its rolls. "The new technologies are not as labor-intensive as past years. An awful lot of jobs have disappeared in the traditional copper wireline business," Miller added. What about fiber-optic linemen, like those working on Verizon's Fios efforts? Those employees were largely under contract already, according to Miller. And once the fiber's in the ground, those jobs will get buried, too. (Photo by AP/David Zalubowski)

His strong opinions in the network neutrality debate may have something do with contributions from Internet service providers like Verizon and AT&T, which are respectively third and fifth on the list of largest contributors to his current re-election campaign, both ahead of oil industry services company Veco. He also counts News Corp. and Disney as top donors, and has championed broadcast flag provisions that would have required electronics manufacturers to bar users from recording digital audio or video flagged by rightsholders.

The investigation by the Department of Justice has been going on for four years, having raided the senator's remodeled home last year. But it's clear that corporations have known that Senator Stevens's vote has been for sale for some time now. The bad news alone might spell doom for the senator's re-election campaign, which would count as good news for open Internet advocates — the Democratic challenger, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, is a strong supporter of network neutrality legislation.

He scoffs at suggestions that the iPhone is about to become a mass-market handset because Apple has accepted mobile operators' pleas to subsidise it. "There goes the conspiracy again," he says of Apple. "You're declaring them a winner before they've earned it on the field."

The Verizon CEO is right. Until the second coming of JesusPhone starts working financial miracles, both here and abroad, the media should be a little more skeptical of the word of Jobs — we all know what happens to those who worship false idols. (Photo by AP/Dima Gavrysh)

This is apparently the first time these ISPs have agreed to censor certain web content. (AOL, whose user base is shrinking, has already blocked certain content, according to the Times.) And once that line is crossed, theoretically it could be pushed to block more and more porn. The first iteration of this filter will probably block just this universally illegal and dangerous content. But with this tool in place nationwide, another federal A.G. like Alberto Gonzales would find it much easier to enforce draconian obscenity laws. (A relevant concern: Just last week a federal jury convicted pornographer Max Hardcore of criminal obscenity for his consensual of-age extreme pornography.)

A filter doesn't stop child porn; it just moves the problem somewhere else. The distributors will just find new ways to pass the porn along, new ways to disguise it, ways to get around the cataloging system that Cuomo's office uses to search for child porn. (Since only law enforcement is allowed to view child porn so they can make sure no one else ever does, one can only speculate what leads a person to land a job on the child porn task force and how much Cuomo's description of child porn — "These are 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, assault victims, there are animals in the pictures" — comes from direct experience.)

The decision also turns the country into Cuomo's de facto jurisdiction. If the content is coming from inside New York, why hasn't Cuomo's office shut down and prosecuted the source? If it's not from New York, how does Cuomo have authority? He argues that ISPs are responsible, and it is hard to refute the logic that no one should knowingly allow someone else to view child pornography. But isn't stopping it his job in the first place?

Photo of Andrew Cuomo by Getty

UPDATE: A Time Warner spokesperson says the Times was wrong, and the company does not plan to block any web sites, but it will access to all newsgroups.

Verizon may, but is not required to monitor your compliance, or the compliance of other subscribers, with the terms, conditions or policies of this Agreement.

Verizon PR has long made much of its pro-privacy policies, and its lawyers have even fought the record industry in court to protect subscribers (or, more cynically, to minimize the cost of investigations). This latest change suggests Verizon's becoming friendlier to spying on its customers. Maybe it's time for a 2008 update, Ivan?

Not the first time this rumor has popped up, but Reuters is reporting that Verizon is in talks to pick up nationwide runt Alltel in a $27 billion deal that would make Verizon Wireless the biggest carrier on the block, with over 80 million subscribers, topping AT&T (67 million + 13 million). The deal's feasible—both use CDMA, and in a saturated wireless market where growth is mostly coming from theft and smaller carriers anyway, buying 'em outright might just be easier. (CNBC's reporting it too, check it for some more biz analysis.) And here's the WSJ take.[Reuters]

In recognition of the rules, Verizon will also make available much-more expensive devices that abide by Google's "open access" rules, but the company doesn't plan to market them. Upset, petition-filing Google lawyers say "Verizon's position would completely reverse the meaning of the rule." (Photo by mtcool1988)

Probably not. For one thing, brokering ads, while trendy right now, is a lower-margin business than selling ads on a website a publisher owns. AOL will have to split any profit with Verizon. And Verizon's inventory, like AOL's, is likely heavy on pageviews from Web-based email and other low-value traffic.

Tacoda, the company whose acquisition brought Viebranz to AOL, had promised to boost significantly the value of ads on those pages. Executives at AOL's Advertising.com unit, including Clarizio, were skeptical of Tacoda's claims, and opposed the acquisition. After Viebranz's ouster, Clarizio now has to prove what insiders at Advertising.com argued: They could do a better job than Tacoda at making money from those ads.