My Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News daily tech news summary for this this interesting report. It is presented exactly as written (italics and paragraph changes are mine). Draw your own conclusions as I have done.
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Accused of sharing of consumer records with federal investigative agencies without court-approved warrants, AT&T has retrofitted its privacy policy to allow it to do just that. "While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T," the company explains in a policy revision that will go into effect tomorrow. "As such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
That's quite a change from the language of the previous privacy policy which said nothing about customers' data being owned by AT&T. But not to worry, AT&T says these new adjustments are simply a "clarification" of existing policy. There's no connection between the updated policy and lawsuits claiming that it violated customers' privacy by participating in the government's domestic spying program.
The intention is "to make our policy much easier to read, with more common language and less legalese," spokesman Marc Bien said in an interview. "Our new privacy language does not expand access to user data for AT&T or anyone."
Tough to take him at his word, though, things being how they are (see "AT&T. Your world, delivered (to the Government)," "Big Mother," "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen," and "Big mother, redux"). It's simple coincidence that AT&T, on the eve of a hearing on charges that it assisted in the government's illegal spying on millions of Americans, changes its privacy policy to reserve the unqualified right to exploit the personal information of its customers in any way the company sees fit? Riiiiggggghhhhtttt.....(rolls eyes).
"They're obviously trying to avoid a hornet's nest of consumer-protection lawsuits," Chris Hoofnagle, a San Francisco privacy consultant and former senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The San Francisco Chronicle. "They've written this new policy so broadly that they've given themselves maximum flexibility when it comes to disclosing customers' records."
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