{"id":7124,"date":"2014-03-03T22:48:56","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T03:48:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/?p=7124"},"modified":"2014-03-03T22:48:56","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T03:48:56","slug":"lawsuit-sprint-charged-us-govt-21-million-too-much-for-spying-expenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/lawsuit-sprint-charged-us-govt-21-million-too-much-for-spying-expenses\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit: Sprint charged US gov\u2019t $21 million too much for spying expenses"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<h2>Lawsuit: Sprint charged US gov\u2019t $21 million too much for spying expenses<\/h2>\n<h3>US files suit against Sprint, says carrier&#8217;s surveillance fees too high.<\/h3>\n<p>The US government today filed suit against Sprint, alleging that the company overcharged government agencies when submitting expense reimbursement requests for wiretap operations that spied on Sprint customers.<\/p>\n<section role=\"main\">Sprint &#8220;knowingly submitted false claims to federal law enforcement\u00a0agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), US\u00a0Marshals Service (USMS), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Immigration and Customs\u00a0Enforcement (ICE), and others, by including unallowable costs in their charges for carrying out court\u00a0orders authorizing wiretaps, pen registers, and trap devices,&#8221; US attorneys wrote in a suit filed today in US District Court in Northern California.Sprint denies the allegations, which the US says cost the government $21 million.<\/section>\n<p>The lawsuit (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.scribd.com\/doc\/210378863\/us-v-sprint\">PDF<\/a>) says that carriers are &#8220;prohibited from using their intercept charges to recover the costs of modifying equipment, facilities or\u00a0services that were incurred to comply with CALEA [Communications Assistance in Law Enforcement Act].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Despite that rule, Sprint&#8217;s reimbursement claims &#8220;included the costs of financing Sprint\u2019s investment in CALEA equipment, including the cost of debt, cost of equity, and associated taxes. &#8230;\u00a0By including these unallowable costs\u00a0in its intercept charges, Sprint inflated its charges by approximately 58 percent.\u00a0As a result of Defendants\u2019\u00a0false claims, the United States paid over $21 million in unallowable costs from January 1, 2007 to July\u00a031, 2010.&#8221;&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This article is from Arstechnica&#8230;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.readability.com\/articles\/vuxivnpb\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>and you can read the rest here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawsuit: Sprint charged US gov\u2019t $21 million too much for spying expenses US files suit against Sprint, says carrier&#8217;s surveillance fees too high. The US government today filed suit against Sprint, alleging that the company overcharged government agencies when submitting expense reimbursement requests for wiretap operations that spied on Sprint customers. Sprint &#8220;knowingly submitted false claims to federal\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/lawsuit-sprint-charged-us-govt-21-million-too-much-for-spying-expenses\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1426,1670,1656],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7124"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7124"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7125,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7124\/revisions\/7125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}