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Edward Whitacre Jr
Edward Earl Whitacre Jr. (born November 4, 1941) is the former chairman and CEO of General Motors. He is also a former chairman of the board and chief executive officer of AT&T, previously Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC). He served as national president of the Boy Scouts of America from 1998 to 2000. On September 1, 2010, Whitacre stepped down as CEO, and retired as chairman of the board by the end of 2010. Life and career Whitacre was born in Ennis, Texas. He graduated from Texas Tech University with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and is a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. He began his career with Southwestern Bell in 1963 as a facility engineer. In October 1988, Whitacre became president and chief operating officer of a regional bell operating company, Southwestern Bell Corporation. Two years later, Whitacre became chairman of the board and chief executive officer. In 1995, Southwestern Bell Corporation changed its name to SBC Communications. Whitac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Government Publishing Office
The United States Government Publishing Office (USGPO or GPO), formerly the United States Government Printing Office, is an agency of the legislative branch of the United States federal government. The office produces and distributes information products and services for all three branches of the Federal Government, including U.S. passports for the Department of State as well as the official publications of the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Executive Office of the President, executive departments, and independent agencies. An act of Congress changed the office's name to its current form in 2014. History Establishment of the Government Printing Office The Government Printing Office was created by congressional joint resolution () on June 23, 1860. It began operations March 4, 1861, with 350 employees and reached a peak employment of 8,500 in 1972. The agency began transformation to computer technology in the 1980s; along with the gradual replacement of paper with el ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pacific Telesis
Pacific Telesis Group (PacTel) was one of the seven Regional Bell Operating Companies, sometimes also referred to as "RBOCs" or "Baby Bells", created in 1983 in preparation of the breakup of AT&T Corporation. Pacific Telesis was the holding company for Pacific Bell, Nevada Bell, Pacific Telesis International, PacTel Mobile Services and PacTel InfoSystems. Pacific Telesis was headquartered in San Francisco and incorporated in Nevada. It was acquired by SBC Communications (the former Southwestern Bell) in 1997, which would eventually become today's AT&T Inc. Nicknames Pacific Telesis is more commonly known as "Pac Bell". Prior to the January 1, 1984, breakup of the Bell System, the corporate name of its principal subsidiary Pacific Bell was The Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Company, which had also been referred to as "PacTel." After the corporate name change, Pacific Bell was commonly known as "PacBell." The red and white star trademarked logo was referred to by company employ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Google
Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC and is one of the world's List of most valuable brands, most valuable brands. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is one of the five Big Tech companies alongside Amazon (company), Amazon, Apple Inc., Apple, Meta Platforms, Meta, and Microsoft. Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Together, they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public company, public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Go ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the List of California cities by population, fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population, 17th-most populous in the United States. San Francisco has a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula and is the County statistics of the United States, fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the Metropolitan statistical area#United States, 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Francisco Bay Area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Room 641A
Room 641A is a telecommunication interception facility operated by AT&T for the U.S. National Security Agency, as part of an American mass surveillance program. The facility commenced operations in 2003 and its purpose was publicly revealed by AT&T technician Mark Klein in 2006. Description Room 641A is located in the SBC Communications building at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, three floors of which were occupied by AT&T before SBC purchased AT&T. The room was referred to in internal AT&T documents as the ''SG3 tudy Group 3Secure Room''. The room measures about and contains several racks of equipment, including a Narus STA 6400, a device designed to intercept and analyze Internet communications at very high speeds. It is fed by fiber optic lines from beam splitters installed in fiber optic trunks carrying Internet backbone traffic. In the analysis of J. Scott Marcus, a former CTO for GTE and a former adviser to the Federal Communications Commission, it has access to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mark Klein
Mark Lee Klein (May 2, 1945 – March 8, 2025) was an American AT&T technician and whistleblower who revealed details of the company's cooperation with the United States National Security Agency in installing network hardware at a site known as Room 641A to monitor, capture and process American telecommunications. The subsequent media coverage became a major story in May 2006. Early life and education Klein was born the younger of two children in Brooklyn on May 2, 1945. His mother was a school teacher and his father was a pharmaceutical executive. Klein graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in history in 1966. He later attended technical school and worked in computer manufacturing before working at AT&T. Career For over 22 years Mark Klein worked for AT&T. Starting with the company as a Communications Technician in New York, where he remained from November 1981 until March 1991, he later continued in that capacity in California until 1998. From January ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for global intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems. The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine. The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees. Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became the largest of the U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget. Still, information available as of 2013 indicates that the C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merger
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of a company, business organization, or one of their operating units is transferred to or consolidated with another entity. They may happen through direct absorption, a merger, a tender offer or a hostile takeover. As an aspect of strategic management, M&A can allow enterprises to grow or downsize, and change the nature of their business or competitive position. Technically, a is the legal consolidation of two business entities into one, whereas an occurs when one entity takes ownership of another entity's share capital, equity interests or assets. From a legal and financial point of view, both mergers and acquisitions generally result in the consolidation of assets and liabilities under one entity, and the distinction between the two is not always clear. Most countries require mergers and acquisitions to comply with antitrust or competition law. In the United States, for example, the Clayt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BellSouth
BellSouth, LLC (stylized as ''BELLSOUTH'' and formerly known as BellSouth Corporation) was an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S. Department of Justice forced the American Telephone & Telegraph Company to divest itself of its regional telephone companies on January 1, 1984. In a merger announced on March 5, 2006, and executed on December 29, 2006, AT&T Inc. (originally SBC Communications) acquired BellSouth for approximately $86 billion (1.325 shares of AT&T for each share of BellSouth). The merger also consolidated ownership of Cingular Wireless and Yellowpages.com, both of which were joint ventures between BellSouth and AT&T. With the merger completed, wireless services previously offered by Cingular Wireless were then offered under the AT&T name, and BellSouth Telecommunications (a subsidiary of a Bell Operating Company) began doing business as AT ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Wu
Timothy Shiou-Ming Wu (born 1971 or 1972) is a Taiwanese-American legal scholar who served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy at the United States from 2021 to 2023. He is also a professor of law at Columbia University and a contributing opinion writer for ''The New York Times''. He is known legally and academically for significant contributions to Antitrust law, antitrust and communications policy, coining the phrase "network neutrality" in his 2003 law journal article, ''Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination''. In the late 2010s, Wu was a leading advocate for an antitrust lawsuit directed at the breakup of Facebook. Wu is a scholar of the media and technology industries, and his academic specialties include antitrust, copyright, and telecommunications law. He was named to ''The National Law Journal''s "America's 100 Most Influential Lawyers" in 2013, as well as to the "Politico 50" in 2014 and 2015. Additionally, Wu was named one ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell South
BellSouth, LLC (stylized as ''BELLSOUTH'' and formerly known as BellSouth Corporation) was an American telecommunications holding company based in Atlanta, Georgia. BellSouth was one of the seven original Regional Bell Operating Companies after the U.S. Department of Justice forced the American Telephone & Telegraph Company to divest itself of its regional telephone companies on January 1, 1984. In a merger announced on March 5, 2006, and executed on December 29, 2006, AT&T Inc. (originally SBC Communications) acquired BellSouth for approximately $86 billion (1.325 shares of AT&T for each share of BellSouth). The merger also consolidated ownership of Cingular Wireless and Yellowpages.com, both of which were joint ventures between BellSouth and AT&T. With the merger completed, wireless services previously offered by Cingular Wireless were then offered under the AT&T name, and BellSouth Telecommunications (a subsidiary of a Bell Operating Company) began doing business as AT&T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AT&T Corporation
AT&T Corporation, an abbreviation for its former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, was an American telecommunications company that provided voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. During the Bell System's long history, AT&T was at times the world's largest telecommunications company, the world's largest cable television operator, and a regulated monopoly. At its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, it employed one million people and its revenue ranged between US$3 billion in 1950 ($ in present-day terms) and $12 billion in 1966 ($ in present-day terms). In 2005, AT&T was acquired by " Baby Bell" and former subsidiary SBC Communications for more than $16 billion ($ in present-day terms). SBC then changed its name to AT&T Inc., with AT&T Corporation continuing to exist as a long-distance calling subsidiary until its dissolution on May 1, 2024. History Origins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
