AT&T, Verizon To Require Opt-In For User Tracking 59
ehaggis writes "The Washington Post reports that AT&T and Verizon have pledged not to track customers' internet behavior unless given explicit, opt-in permission. The two companies made this commitment in a Congressional hearing. A Verizon vice president is quoted: 'Verizon believes that before a company captures certain Internet-usage data... it should obtain meaningful, affirmative consent from consumers.' The article also mentions a survey quoted by a congressman indicating that '72 percent of Americans worry their online activities are being tracked by companies.'"
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
User tracking can't be good. The information gleaned from 15 million users can be. Imagine if you could see every search for political terms from anywhere. Those Google trends charts start to be more meaningful than they already are. Perhaps a researcher might want to know what level of exposure there is to cellular radiation among pre-teens? There are thousands of statistics that might probably be useful if everyone allowed tracking. Nobody wants big brother following them around town, or listening to their conversations. The dangers are imminent, and the idea that a health care provider might in the future refuse treatment of a skin tumor on your cheek because of recorded cellular usage is frighteningly real.
The desire of big brother to want to be able to track anyone anytime is also a great danger. The bad guys will always thwart such efforts and only the innocent will be harmed.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Buried in page 15 of the EULA? (Score:3, Interesting)
This is certainly not the case. The three letter agencies are increasingly staffed with contractors from private firms. The idea of selling intelligence collection to the private sector has been gaining ground since GHW Bush years, and really took off after 9/11. At that time, the government found that they had laid off all the analysts who could do the kind of cold war work they needed, and had to rehire them at several times their old rate. Estimates put the number of contractors at CIA (for example) at 70% of the budget. The budget is, of course, highly classified and we can't know for certain.
That's neither here nor there, but companies like Verizon wouldn't say no to a fat payday like they've been getting. In the name of corporate responsibility? Responsibility to anyone but their shareholders? If there hadn't been huge sums of money involved, Verizon wouldn't have cooperated with warrantless wiretapping programs in the first place.
As recently as last year, a study group comprised of executives from Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, and other intelligence contractors reached the conclusion that foreign and domestic intelligence operations need to be more interconnected than they have been in the past. Surprise, surprise, since it means they'll get a lot more work from the govt.
Read Spies for Hire [timshorrock.com] by Tim Shorrock.