connecting*the*dots

(photo by Majka en Thrall)

David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle
AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn’t yours

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers’ personal data with government officials.

The new policy says that AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.”

The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service — something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.

Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service — a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers’ recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others.

The company’s policy overhaul follows recent reports that AT&T was one of several leading telecom providers that allowed the National Security Agency warrantless access to its voice and data networks as part of the Bush administration’s war on terror.

[…]

If you have a broadband cable connection and you’re still using AT&T, you deserve to be wire-tapped. Between Vonage and SkypeOut & Voicemail, there are enough stable VoIP choices out there to get off of the telcom infrastructure of eavesdropping.

Now, if I had no choice and had to use AT&T or Verizon as a provider, I’d be in contact (via email of course) with the Electronic Frontier Foundation today, adding my name to a class action lawsuit.

First, there was the machinima net neutrality PSA. Now it’s straight up, raw information:

Check out the tag archive for “net neutrality”.

Spam Daily News
EFF: AT&T forwards all Internet traffic into NSA

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF’s filing them under seal — a well-established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence.

While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is “presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case.”

“The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

“More than just threatening individuals’ privacy, AT&T’s apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans’ Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now,” said Bankston.

EFF’s evidence regarding AT&T’s dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.

“The public deserves to know about AT&T’s illegal program,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “In an abundance of caution, we are providing AT&T with an opportunity to explain itself before this material goes on the public docket, but we believe that justice will ultimately require full disclosure.”

The NSA program came to light in December, when the New York Times reported that the President had authorized the agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications inside the United States without the authorization of any court.

“Mark Klein is a true American hero,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “He has bravely come forward with information critical for proving AT&T’s involvement with the government’s invasive surveillance program.”

In the lawsuit, EFF is representing the class of all AT&T residential customers nationwide. Working with EFF in the lawsuit are the law firms Traber & Voorhees, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP and the Law Office of Richard R. Wiebe.

Does anyone actually choose to use AT&T anymore? If EFF is right, they’ve gone beyond clueless and entered the territory of dangerous. This is a perfect example of fat cat, old money corporations having control of major aspects of web infrastructure. Business as usual has no regard for the US Constitution unless it’s to protect their own collective asses.

IMHO of course.

I’ll play the broken record once again; go join EFF and donate as much as you can.

Fresh on the heels of their first campaign blunder, AT&T dives right back in and makes the exact same mistake:

Unbelievable.

I could get really snarky with this post (yes, Tish, I do have it in me), but I’ll let the images below speak for themselves:

(via Miss Rogue and David King)