This is a great article about what AT and T is going to do; monitor every bit of information that goes across its network. Oh sure, we’ve known for a while that they do this for the government, but apparently now they are doing it for the RIAA (recording industry) and MPAA (film industry). If this feels a little strange, maybe it’s because it reverses the idea of innocent until proven guilty (granted that is for govt. and no such principal necessarily applies to private industry). The article does a great job of pointing out that the telecoms pushed for (and got) a protection from liability for providing material (as opposed to what happened to Napster or Grokster) assuming that they had no part in deciding what it was. This would seem to contravene that. This also brings in an interesting question about which is more important as a service provider; serving your customers, or helping another industry. If free enterprise is correct, then this knowledge should mean terrible impacts on AT and T’s financial (as the article predicts). If not, then we have a profound example of user’s naïveté about privacy and control measures that is destined to play itself out with potentially unfortunate consequences in the future (the TIA program’s plant to use letter carriers as agents for the govt. and then later firefighters comes to mind as such things in the govt. sector). As for how the public will react, and if AT and T will suffer any measurable financial impact, only the future will tell.
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