AT&T to monitor your network use

Walter, what you've described has almost nothing to do with reality. If you drill down in your own links, you'll see that AT&T has announced precisely nothing in terms of actual policy. You'll see that the speculative AT&T discussions are about filtering peer-to-peer traffic (eg Limewire, bittorrent) with digital fingerprinting technology, and have nothing to do with "carte blanche access to review all your emails, all your internet surfing and instant chat messages." Comcast is already singling out P2P packets, so this isn't even a new phenomenon.

I oppose all of this, but breathless posting about snooping peoples' emails doesn't advance the debate.

Quickly dismissing things as being safe as milk hardly advances a debate either, Kim.

Someone much smarter than either you or me once said that "Man has never invented a bomb that they didn't use."

Translation?

Well, I think that's pretty easy to figure out.

In my many years of observing human nature, I'd have to say that I have yet to see the "door cracked open" that wasn't eventually pushed open all the way.

FDR used WW2 as a means to get the personal income tax into place and it was supposed to be a "temporary" measure that would be rescinded after the war. It wasn't. California has had so many of these "temporary" laws that then become permanent that I can't keep track of them all anymore.

With the "Patriot" Act in place (which was much nicer than calling it the "Cancellation of Your Civil Liberties" Act), many of the phone companies, etc., have already given over many people's phone records and recording of calls to the Federal government. If I am not mistaken, I recall reading somewhere that AT&T was one of the very companies that has done this.

Lastly, if you wish to make personal assessments of people's posts (by calling them "breathless," etc.), please don't get bitchey again when people do it to you. (As you have done here a number of times.)

Yer pal,

Ron Lindeboom

With the "Patriot" Act in place (which was much nicer than calling it the "Cancellation of Your Civil Liberties" Act),

Yep, well put.  I never understood the Patriot Act and how it was actually passed, no matter how paranoid people in government got.  But at least the Patriot Act and all that goes with it is a government thing, not a private company.

Now when this private company just decides they are going to review all of their customers' phone, internet and live chat just because they can, that's a lot different.  You're paying to use their services and to use it as you see fit, without the worry that everything you're doing is being watched over.

Now if you find yourself in a government investigation, a police investigation, where you are being looked at for a legitimate legal reason, well then by all means, the legal process can request all information regarding what you're doing with your at&t services.  But outside of that I don't see any reason for at&t to simply review your accounts simply because they can. 

Walter Biscardi, Jr. www.biscardicreative.com

Walter said: "But at least the Patriot Act and all that goes with it is a government thing, not a private company."

I was with you, Walter, right up to this remark. Then, my inner-train careened off the rails.

Why?

I would that neither the government nor private industry tracked what I do, say, think or believe. (But with Google out there tracking people to incredible degree, who needs to worry about AT&T, Verizon or anyone else anyway?) I feel like this, not because I am doing anything wrong, but rather because civil liberties are being lost at record pace.

I would take absolutely no comfort whatsoever in knowing that it's the govenment watching over my shoulder, instead of private industry.

Ron Lindeboom

I would take absolutely no comfort whatsoever in knowing that it's the govenment watching over my shoulder, instead of private industry.

Neither do I, trust me, I abhor the Patriot Act and everything it stands for.  But my point was that the government can be justified just a little bit more than private industry.  We expect that our liberties might be trifiled with by the government.  We don't expect private industry to do this.

I'm definitely writing to my local representatives about my feelings on at&t, but of course I live in a very right wing republican state so the chances of these republicans having any concern at all about my feelings is probably moot. 

Walter Biscardi, Jr. www.biscardicreative.com