AT&T: Massive Privacy Violation
This is scary. John Paczkowski of Good Morning Silicon Valley writes about an egregious illegal action by AT&T. AT&T gave the National Security Agency complete access to a huge database of customer information.
[tease]
On an average day AT&T carries some 300 million voice calls as well as over 4,000 terabytes of data — approximately 200 times the amount of data contained in all the books in the Library of Congress. It is, hands down, the largest telecommunications provider in the United States and one of the largest in the world. So to hear that the company has for years diverted a large portion of the communications entrusted to it to the National Security Agency for it to datamine to its heart’s content is discomfiting to say the least.
[tease]
A sworn statement from a retired AT&T telecommunications technician and several internal AT&T documents show that the company gave the government unfettered access to its more than 300 terabyte “Daytona” database of caller information — one of the largest databases in the world.
Our constitional rights are eroding at an alarming rate. How sad.
[via Good Morning Silicon Valley]
[see also Wired News]