“Without us, nothing.” Since the George W. Bush administration, the former U.S. phone monopoly AT&T appears to have provided cooperation in constitutionally questionable surveillance projects to such a degree that one might conclude the company thinks no one can be elected president of the U.S.A. without its support.
In addition to the famous access to a key internet node that AT&T was caught providing in San Francisco in 2002 and then granted retroactive immunity for by Congress, NYTimes.com reporting and others’ follow-ups appear to indicate AT&T has been keeping its own copies of phone communications which people have used to access e.g. a 26-year-old phone call. AT&T let government agents hire and even “embed” AT&T employees to help search the phone company’s difficult-to-use database providing access to these calls. NYTimes.com described the expensive database consultants as having to sit next to the government agents as they attempted to use the software; if this is so it makes you wonder how and if AT&T managed to keep the N.S.A. and G.C.H.Q. from having remote access to its computers.
AT&T also appears to be gradually re-acquiring the Baby Bell phone companies it was split into. Were that the case, the company might leave ~1.5 competitors in the market to avoid appearing monopolistic.
(OH neh OONTS NIX.)
