June 22nd, 2006
Hey, Osama, be very afraid. Here comes the NSA AND Ed Whitacre's AT&T
AT&T Inc. (that’s their CEO, Ed Whitacre) says that starting tomorrow it will revise the language of its privacy practices, letting customers know that AT&T owns their phone records and can hand them over to law enforcement on request.
Not coincidental that these changes come at the same time AT&T and other telcos are looking at lawsuits claiming they helped a U.S. government domestic spying program by giving the National Security Agency long-distance calling records of millions of customers without their permission.
AT&T said the privacy practice language was changed not because of any revision on how it treats customer information, but to clarify the policy.
The Reuters news service noted that AT&Ts new policy, unlike the old one, spells out the fact that AT&T owns its customers data. It says that customer information constitutes "business records that are owned by AT&T. As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process".
Hey Osama, here comes Ed Whitacre. You know we haven’t found you in the 57+ months since 9/11, but thanks to AT&T’s call records, we’re comin’ to get ya.
America, Don’t you feel safer, now?
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
