Posted on 06/28/2007 8:28:10 AM PDT by PajamaTruthMafia
AT&T is getting together with Hollywood studios and recording companies to develop technology to snoop on your Internet traffic in search of pirated material, according to a story posted today by the LA Times. You'll need to register for free with the Times site to read the original story.
At a time when Apple, EMI and other companies are making the no-brainer, money-making decision to sell music without cumbersome and annoying digital-rights management, AT&T has decided to go the "Privacy? What privacy?" route.
This should flat out be illegal. To me, it's akin to AT&T deciding they're going to wiretap all of its cellular customer's phone calls to see if anyone is leaking company trade secrets. It also seems in keeping with AT&T's disdain for Net Neutrality, and willingness to hand off customer call records to the government.
The Times story suggests that AT&T's move is meant to protect profits from new pay-television services, and the piece says the technology will "not violate privacy laws or Internet freedoms espoused by the Federal Communications Commission."
Great to know my privacy is of concern - but there are just two problems with that glib statement. For one, we don't have a real, overarching law to protect privacy at the national level, like Europe. Privacy groups have been pushing for one for years, and I'd love to see it, but we don’t have one.
And as far as the FCC is concerned, something tells me they'd be more eager to block me from IM'ing dirty words than to protect me from this sort of Big Brother snooping.
The Times story doesn't say whether AT&T plans to implement the anti-piracy tech at Internet end-points, where you connect through your ISP to the Internet, in AT&T's massive backbone network that carries a huge amount of Internet traffic, or both. It also doesn't say whether AT&T will actually look into the files or Web pages you send and receive, or whether it would be a less intrusive analysis of the types of traffic being sent around.
Either way, if AT&T moves ahead with the plan I'll be looking for another ISP. I currently have AT&T Yahoo! DSL, but I think I'd prefer a company that at least pretended to put my privacy above its profits.
If this goes through, actors and singers who were horrified by the Patriot Act will be just fine with this. Terrorists don’t bother them, but profit loss, well, that’s something else!
Whoever’s assigned to monitor me will die of boredom.
“She’s on Free Republic . . . now she’s on eBay . . . now back to Free Republic . . . eBay again . . . she’s Googling something . . . now Free Republic . . . now that knitting site . . . can I swap with someone?”
You said it !!
Liberal hypocrites !!
Of course, the sound you will hear is of AT&T stock falling, on the simple premise that when a company is more interested in appeasing other companies than its customers, massive losses are inevitable.
lol. Sounds like my traffic. Except for the knitting sites of course. I tend to hang out on boating sites instead.
Sounds like me, only I NEVER Google, I Dogpile, and it’s cross stitching sites. :p
Cookies can only track which web sites you visit, and to some extent, what you did there. They can't tell whether or not you downloaded pirated music or video using Limewire or the like.
If tracking cookies make you nervous, the should open up a whole new world of paranoia.
So, they’re going to break the law to find people breaking the law? Interesting.
Funny, as I cruised past this comment I had a flash thought to renew my 7-11 no-contract cellphone. Then I realised that nothing I say(or any of my family says) would make an agent get a stiffy. AT&T is not my favorite outfit.
Time to include in all emails words like:
terrorist pig
gun
bomb
bomba
Rosie
bada Bing
mafia
Putin
Nancy smells
fugggetaboutit
It’s wrong and illegal, but that won’t bother them.
This is actually an old story...
“
If you’re a Windows user, fire up an MS-DOS command prompt. Now type tracert followed by the domain name of the website, e-mail host, VoIP switch, or whatever destination you’re interested in. Watch as the program spits out your route, line by line.
C:\> tracert nsa.gov
1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 12.110.110.204
[...]
7 11 ms 14 ms 10 ms as-0-0.bbr2.SanJose1.Level3.net [64.159.0.218]
8 13 12 19 ms ae-23-56.car3.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.123.173]
9 18 ms 16 ms 16 ms 192.205.33.17
10 88 ms 92 ms 91 ms tbr2-p012201.sffca.ip.att.net [12.123.13.186]
11 88 ms 90 ms 88 ms tbr1-cl2.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.41]
12 89 ms 97 ms 89 ms tbr1-cl4.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.29]
13 89 ms 88 ms 88 ms ar2-a3120s6.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.123.8.65]
14 102 ms 93 ms 112 ms 12.127.209.214
15 94 ms 94 ms 93 ms 12.110.110.13
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * *
In the above example, my traffic is jumping from Level 3 Communications to AT&T’s network in San Francisco, presumably over the OC-48 circuit that AT&T tapped on February 20th, 2003, according to the Klein docs.
The magic string you’re looking for is sffca.ip.att.net. If it’s present immediately above or below a non-att.net entry, then — by Klein’s allegations — your packets are being copied into room 641A, and from there, illegally, to the NSA.
Of course, if Marcus is correct and AT&T has installed these secret rooms all around the country, then any att.net entry in your route is a bad sign.
“
AT&T has been on my sh%$ list for about 5 years now. This reaffirms their status on the list. I’ll go Internet phone service before I’ll pay AT&T a thin dime.
Hey its their network..
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