Ma Bell, risen from near death like the hydra, now says they own your phone records and will disclose them however they see fit:
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.
I will now begin the process of switching our home-phone service...
Yesterday I sent Illinois Senator Dick Durbin an email asking him to support S.2917, the "net neutrality" act currently working its way through the Senate. His office responded quickly, but I have no idea from reading it what his position is. Can anyone help?
Thank you for contacting me about network neutrality. I appreciate having your thoughts on this issue.
Net neutrality is a principle holding that Internet access providers should not be permitted to engage in favoritism when configuring their networks and delivering Internet content. Such favoritism could occur if a provider transmitted its own offerings at faster speeds than those of its competitors or if a provider charged digital content and application companies a fee for equally fast delivery.
This issue has gained attention recently as several telecommunications company executives have made statements raising concerns that delivery may be impaired for content providers unwilling to pay additional fees for fast transmission. Many of these executives later clarified that they have no intention of degrading or blocking other traffic, particularly if it might prompt customers to switch to other providers, but merely wish to offer video delivery to their own customer base at a premium service level unavailable to non-paying competitors. Some in the industry have favorably compared additional network performance tiers to airlines selling coach and business class tickets or package delivery companies offering ground and air service. Other observers have expressed concern about the impact of such steps on consumers.
Legislation on network neutrality has been offered, building on an earlier, non-binding set of network neutrality principles adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in late 2005. Most prominent among these bills is the Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2005, S. 2360, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. This bill would prohibit network operators from generally impairing, or discriminating between, any network traffic, in terms of bandwidth allocation, accessibility, or pricing. It also would require access providers to permit consumers to connect devices to the provider's network, as long as such actions do not harm the provider's network, while still permitting providers to take defensive measures against network threats. Consumers would be able to bring complaints to the FCC for action and request that a federal court review FCC decisions.
Opponents of network neutrality argue that a regime prohibiting "bit discrimination" would deny network operators the opportunity to differentiate their services from other providers, thereby stifling the incentive to create innovative content for their customers. They also argue that network operators may face greater difficulties in raising the funding necessary for planned infrastructure upgrades if the improved network speeds would benefit their competitors as much as themselves.
Proponents of network neutrality -- including major Internet content providers, hardware and software companies, and consumer groups -- point to the money that operators already receive from end user and content provider access fees, the technological innovation that network neutrality may encourage, and the lack of high-speed Internet access marketplace competition that leaves much of the country with little opportunity to switch providers if their current provider were to engage in bit discrimination against the services or applications preferred by consumers.
S. 2360 has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee. I will keep your thoughts in mind in case this legislation reaches the Senate floor.
Thank you again for your message. Please keep in touch.
Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
I think he may be for it...I certainly hope so. Note that our junior senator, Barack Obama, is a co-sponsor of the bill, and he and Durbin are in the same party.
Why is Durbin being so cagey?
Talking Points Memo has a list of the Senators supporting, opposed to, and dithering over S.2917, the "Net Neutrality" legislation currently winding its way through the Senate.
Illinois Senator Obama is a co-sponsor; I've just sent our Senator Durbin an email asking him to do the same.
I read every word in her column today, and I still have no idea what Maureen Dowd thinks of bloggers (sub.req.):
If I had to be relegated to the Dustbin of History, I'm glad it was in Vegas.
I, Old Media, came here to attend a New Media convention of progressive political bloggers aiming for a technological revolution that would dispatch mainstream media to the tumbrels. It was the journalistic equivalent of mingling with your own pod replicant in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
Bemused, perhaps? I truy can't tell.
My father has posted his very first eBay listing: 50 decorative tea tins, mint condition. I'm so proud of him.
By the way, if you need any tea tins—perhaps for a school project, or an art installation—you have until next Thursday to bid on them.
One of my daily digests contained a link to "How to choose the best database for your business." By Oracle.
Golly. Which database do you suppose they recommend? Think it's MySql?
The California Court of Appeal, Sixth District, has reversed a lower-court order that blogger Jason O'Grady had to turn over his sources for a story he wrote about Apple Computer:
Online writers are protected by the state's shield law for reporters as well as by the 1st Amendment, the state Court of Appeal in San Jose ruled, reversing a lower court decision.
Apple subpoenaed the e-mail provider of Jason O'Grady, publisher of O'Grady's PowerPage, an Internet site that posted information in 2004 about an unreleased Apple product.
The ruling establishes that Web reporters have the same right to protect the confidentially of sources as other reporters, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Cool.
The case is O'Grady v. Superior Court of Santa Clara County (184 kB, PDF).
I'll be away from the blog for a couple of days while I return to Chicago. I've enjoyed Nashua, and I'm sure I'll come back to visit. Everyone here was friendly; for example, my unexpected dinner companion, Max:
Back Monday. Enjoy the weekend.
Microsoft has suspended at least 1,000 contracts with developers for a week, just like (*snap*) that:
Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said Monday that Microsoft told vendors who supply the contractors that about 1,000 workers globally would not be needed this week. The vendors, whose workers do software development for Microsoft, also were told to schedule two other days off, Gellos said.
Gellos also said the decision was unrelated to a move, announced late last week, to offer new perks to its Redmond employees such as enhanced child-care benefits, access to dry cleaning and grocery delivery services, and better cafeteria food.
Now, it's well known in the industry that Microsoft uses contractors as their primary workforce. This demonstrates one of the reasons. You can't lay off 1,000 employees for a week; it winds up costing more than you save. But contractors? No such restrictions.
It works both ways, however. Contractors rarely have the long-term interests of the company in mind. (I hope the companies that have contracted for my services feel I'm in the minority.) Over the past few years I've gotten increasingly distressed seeing the quality of work that many contractors produce. The simple solution, I think, is to have long-term employees supervise the contractors better on the one hand, and to create a workable system of warranties on the other. If contractors had to maintain their own code, I guarantee you they'd write better stuff.
Those topics will have to wait, however, while I go back to fulfilling the last day of my current contract.
In the ongoing, and now expanded, case the Electronic Frontier Foundation has brought against AT&T for its role in aiding the National Security Agency's efforts to spy on us, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughan Walker will allow confidential AT&T documents into the case:
The evidence at issue was filed as support for EFF's motion for a preliminary injunction against AT&T, seeking to stop the company's ongoing violations of the law and the privacy of its customers.
AT&T had requested that the evidence be returned to AT&T, and not used in the case. Wednesday, Judge Walker denied that request. Although the allegedly proprietary documents will remain under seal, Judge Walker instructed AT&T to work with EFF to narrowly redact any confidential material from EFF's brief and supporting declarations so that they can be made public as soon as possible.
Salon (reg.req.) reports that the documents came from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein, who "was motivated to blow the whistle in 2004 'when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on Internet traffic.'"