Verizon appears in The Bob Zadek Show chiefly as an example of a large incumbent firm whose lobbying and data holdings shape law and regulation, rather than as the subject of a dedicated episode. The excerpts name it in two contexts: the 2014 fight over cell phone unlocking, where it is described as one of the largest lobbying entities in Washington, and two 2022 discussions of automated license plate readers, where its cell phone records serve as the model for how police obtain third-party data under a warrant.
The unlocking ban and the lobbying fight
In the 2014 episode with Derek Khanna, Verizon is named as one of the two dominant carriers against which a grassroots campaign was waged. Khanna, describing his work for the House Republican Study Committee, recounts that in 2012 the Librarian of Congress banned phone unlocking in the United States, making it in practice a felony punishable by five years in prison for a consumer to unlock a phone. He attributes the ban to lobbying by the big phone companies, calling it an example of a regulator few had heard of adjusting a law few were aware of Derek Khanna - What’s Stifling Innovation? (2014).
Bob Zadek frames the episode as crony capitalism, describing Big Cell going to the Librarian to obtain protection from consumers changing carriers on phones they own. Khanna then places Verizon among the largest spenders in Washington: AT&T and Verizon, he says, are each top ten lobbying companies in Washington, D.C., so the campaign was taking on two of the ten biggest lobbying entities there. Against that, he describes a movement with no money and no organization behind it, and no tech or phone company lobbying on its side.
The concrete stake Khanna identifies is market access. He notes there are over 100 wireless carriers in the country and argues the ruling would have decimated the wireless industry, because it is very difficult for a new carrier to compete with AT&T and Verizon and T-Mobile if it cannot have access to the premier phones. He also argues that even if no one was arrested under the ban, it drove down competition and destroyed the resale market, amounting to corporate welfare for the big phone companies.
The campaign’s instrument was a White House petition created by Sina Khanifar, an entrepreneur out of San Francisco whose company had offered unlocking for consumers and had been shut down. Khanna says the signature threshold had just been raised to 100,000, and that no one had previously hit the new requirement. The petition drew 114,000 signatures. Khanna recounts that the White House called him the day of and said it agreed with the petition and would go further, after which the Federal Communications Commission initiated an investigation and eventually forced the phone companies to allow consumers to unlock. He also says Congressman Jason Chaffetz tweeted him immediately after the President and said he would be introducing legislation.
Bob Zadek’s framing throughout is that Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, was caving to Big Cell while the petition pushed from the bottom up. Khanna agrees that Republicans eventually gave a lot of support, but later on, and that early responses from members of Congress and their staff were that it would be crazy to expect them to take on the big phone companies.
Verizon as the model for third-party data
In the two 2022 episodes on automated license plate readers, Verizon appears not as a lobbyist but as the archetype of a private holder of location data that police must approach with a warrant. In the episode with Jonathan Hofer, Bob Zadek poses a hypothetical: if all the data were collected by private parties rather than government, and it were like cell phone records collected by Verizon, where the police need a warrant to get that cell phone data from Verizon and get the warrant if they can satisfy a judge they are entitled to it, would Hofer’s concern be materially satisfied if law enforcement could never be the collector The Mass Surveillance nobody is talking about (2022).
Hofer answers that he does not necessarily have a problem with law enforcement collecting its own scans, and that requiring a warrant to get data from third parties would be eons ahead of where things are now. He says most of his concerns would be absolved, and that he is fine with private companies handling toll collection or parking enforcement in private parking garages, but that he does have a problem with what the government would do with such records. He states that he does not think the government has a vested interest in keeping records on people not suspected of criminal wrongdoing.
The same exchange appears in the companion episode on ALPRs, where Zadek again uses Verizon cell phone records as the comparison for data held by a private party and obtainable by warrant, and Hofer gives the same answer about warrants putting the system eons ahead A PSA on ALPRs (2022). In that episode Hofer also notes that a company aggregating data and renting access to police argued it had a First Amendment right to the data, asking what the difference was between itself and a newspaper, since license plates are in public; he says there is no court case where that argument is butted up against mosaic theory.
Across episodes: the same company, two roles
The excerpts show no development in how Verizon itself is treated; what changes is the question being asked. In 2014 Verizon is the adversary — a top-ten lobbying entity opposing unlocking, whose defeat came through a 114,000-signature petition, a White House statement, an FCC investigation, and eventual legislation. In 2022 Verizon is the analogy — the private record-holder whose data police may obtain by satisfying a judge, cited by Bob Zadek as the standard against which license plate reader proposals should be measured, with Jonathan Hofer responding that warrant requirements would be eons ahead of current practice. The two 2022 episodes present the same exchange in nearly identical terms, so the later treatment adds no new position on Verizon; it simply reuses the company as a benchmark for lawful third-party access.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Verizon’s corporate history, size, ownership, or headquarters, nor any date on which it was founded. They do not describe the outcome of the unlocking campaign beyond Khanna’s account of the White House statement, the FCC investigation, and the phone companies being forced to allow unlocking, and they do not name the legislation Chaffetz said he would introduce. No excerpt states what any court held about Verizon’s cell phone records, which amendment governed the warrant requirement Zadek describes, or the name of any case involving the company.