AT&T: All Your Phone Data Are Belong to Us

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So, AT&T has a secret room in its global internet hub where the government gets to play, and nobody knows what they’re doing there. That’s what Salon says, anyway. AT&T won’t confirm it, saying only the “help” they give the feds is “strictly within the law and under the most stringent conditions.”

Now, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that AT&T is rewriting its privacy policy for its Internet customers — and the new rules say that your data isn’t yours anymore. Information about how customers access the internet, once thought to belong to the customer, will belong to AT&T. And they can do anything they want with it, including sharing it with the government for whatever reason they deem “within the law.”

The changes would effectively undercut a customer’s legal standing to sue the company if it improperly shared his data with anyone, including the government. If you don’t agree with the changes, you don’t get service.

The new rules go into effect Friday, the Chronicle says.

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