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AT&T Is Spying on Americans For Profit, New Documents Reveal (thedailybeast.com)
AT&T has been secretly spying on its own customers, the Daily Beast reports. The revelation comes days after the top carrier announced plans to purchase Time Warner. The report claims that AT&T ran a program called Project Hemisphere through which it analyzed cellular data from the company's call records to determine where a given individual is located and with whom they are speaking. The New York Times reported about the program's existence in 2013, but it was described as a "partnership" between A&T and the government for fighting narcotics trafficking. But today's report, which cites several classifed documents, claims that AT&T used Hemisphere for a range of other functions -- and always without a warrant. From the report:Hemisphere is a secretive program run by AT&T that searches trillions of call records and analyzes cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why. [...] Hemisphere isn't a "partnership" but rather a product AT&T developed, marketed, and sold at a cost of millions of dollars per year to taxpayers. No warrant is required to make use of the company's massive trove of data, according to AT&T documents, only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public. These new revelations come as the company seeks to acquire Time Warner in the face of vocal opposition saying the deal would be bad for consumers. While telecommunications companies are legally obligated to hand over records, AT&T appears to have gone much further to make the enterprise profitable, according to ACLU technology policy analyst Christopher Soghoian. "Companies have to give this data to law enforcement upon request, if they have it. AT&T doesn't have to data-mine its database to help police come up with new numbers to investigate," Soghoian said. AT&T has a unique power to extract information from its metadata because it retains so much of it. The company owns more than three-quarters of U.S. landline switches, and the second largest share of the nation's wireless infrastructure and cellphone towers, behind Verizon. AT&T retains its cell tower data going back to July 2008, longer than other providers. Verizon holds records for a year and Sprint for 18 months, according to a 2011 retention schedule obtained by The Daily Beast.
I'm guessing too big to fail also means too big for jail.
Nobody is going to jail because none of this is illegal. That is the problem.
I sure wish Obama was actually going to stop this kind of thing like he promised long ago :(
Credo is an MVNO running on the Verizon network. Therefore, Verizon can do exactly the same monitoring of your calls as they do with those of their own customers.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As stated well by a ham in the comments to the linked article... "Amateur radio is explicitly not for traffic that needs to remain private. It exists for limited purposes not including routine communication that can be served by other means (e.g. a phone or ordinary internet connection). It is chiefly for education and research/experimentation in radio. It is not for general personal communications or commercial use." http://www.kb6nu.com/if-gotenn...
two words: Parallel Construction
What's new is that they are selling the data to law enforcement. Until this was revealed, general opinion was that the data was only given to law enforcement when it was requested. Now we see that the phone company is out trying to encourage law enforcement to consume the data for a price. My answer is about the same as the AC response (currently moderated at zero) but without the unnecessary personal attack.