[325] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] AT&T: "Music and Movie Piracy is More Important
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Thu Jan 10 18:06:31 2008
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Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:01:27 -0800
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AT&T: "Music and Movie Piracy is More Important
than Child Abuse or Terrorism"
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000356.html
Greetings. Why does AT&T apparently feel that protecting the
financial interests of the entertainment industry is more important
than fighting terrorism or child abuse? Let's explore how recent
AT&T statements concerning their Internet operations provide an
illuminating look into their corporate priorities.
The saga of ISP plans to become the prying eyes of the Internet
continues to unfold, most recently with AT&T's public
enthusiasm for the concept of monitoring at the network level
for what they define as copyright violations associated with pirated
entertainment materials (e.g. those satanic P2P applications)
( http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000355.html ).
In response to some of my recent postings on this subject, a large
number of readers have asked me various forms of basically the same
very provocative question.
To wit: If AT&T is going to openly spy on the contents of data
traffic flows between individual Internet users and take actions
based on that surveillance, are they also taking responsibility to
find, remove, and/or report all other potentially illicit,
dangerous, or otherwise objectionable materials on the network?
That is, by intruding themselves into non-public data communications
streams in this manner, are they essentially abdicating their
effective immunity to civil or criminal actions related to data
transiting their network facilities?
I'm not referring here to whatever secret data pipelines AT&T has
been feeding to NSA or other spooks in furtherance of illegal
government surveillance operations, but rather the company's openly
discussed public plans for routine network content surveillance,
which have been receiving so much publicity lately.
This topic presents a range of legal questions that would ultimately
have to be settled by courts -- and there's no guarantee that those
courts will necessarily rule the way that AT&T's legal team have
presumably assumed.
But it's certainly a fascinating issue, with a number of decidedly
non-trivial implications.
Keep in mind that we're talking about the surveillance of private
data in end-to-end user communications. This is a wholly different
situation from, for example, YouTube's filtering of materials that
have been submitted by users for public dissemination. While one
can argue about particular specifics, in general it's clear that
YouTube or other public access sites should be free to apply
whatever rules they wish to filter submitted items that will be seen
by the public on those sites -- in fact it would be crazy not to
apply some sort of mechanism to classify and/or remove various types
of items in such a public viewing environment.
Nor are AT&T's new plans analogous to scanning for viruses or spam
before they reach subscriber mailboxes -- those are functions
provided for the presumed benefit of those subscribers themselves,
and generally can be controlled to a significant extent by users if
they wish.
What AT&T is now talking about is clearly most similar to
straightforward wiretapping of individual, private communications.
It appears to be the same principle that would apply if AT&T decided
to monitor all of our phone calls to listen for discussions of
illicit or illegal activity, and then act on that surveillance.
There's only one really significant difference -- such widespread
monitoring of phone call contents would typically be obviously
illegal (at least in the U.S.) -- but monitoring of Internet data
contents still resides in something of a grey area, and both ISPs and
government have been all too willing to exploit this situation.
But apart from these legal niceties, and the fact that encryption
would render most content surveillance (though not necessarily
traffic analysis) moot in short order, it's certainly the case that
AT&T's plans represent a major thrust into a brave new world of
Internet content spying. And as such, one can't help but wonder
about their particular choice of targets and priorities.
If AT&T and perhaps other ISPs are ready to jump into this particular
deep quagmire, why haven't though chosen to seek out uses of the
network that presumably have truly negative consequences for all of
society, not just for the pocketbooks of the entertainment giants?
Hell, if you're going to make the case that's it's OK and beneficial
to monitor Internet traffic content at the network level, don't start
by kowtowing to the MPAA and RIAA -- let's see some of that old
Ma Bell AT&T guts like in the old days!
Here's what you do ... Forget the music and movies for now and let's
really concentrate on targets that will be an easy sell for that
segment of the population who thinks privacy is an antiquated old
idea ready for the trash heap anyway!
Announce that you're going to monitor the Internet for anything that
might be child porn related. Proclaim that you'll sift through every
unencrypted byte for any communications that might suggest illegal
activity -- everything from overdue library books to terrorism to
political troublemakers.
If you're going to push the idea of tossing the Constitution and Bill
of Rights out the window, at least do it with vigor, with substance,
with style! Don't waste your revolutionary spying effort on silly
songs and forgettable films! Give the surveillance-mongers
something that they can really dig their teeth into for some serious
publicity and propaganda!
True, by concentrating your surveillance platform on unencrypted P2P
you might stand to make a significant dent in all of that darn data
that you can't monetize the way you'd wish, but we certainly
know that you wouldn't dream of implementing content spying just to
make yourself and the entertainment moguls mere money!
And ya' know what? If people don't want to believe that you'd do
this all out of a true concern for society and not just a matter of
simple greed, you should just tell 'em to go stuff themselves!
After all, you're not Google! You don't have a "don't be evil"
creed. You're AT&T. You're the phone company. You're an ISP.
You're *allowed* to be evil!
Show us what you're made of, AT&T! Be a real example for other
ISPs! It's your network. It's your data! We peon Internet users
will just have to learn to fall into line with your world view, or go
back to smoke signals and cave paintings.
Now get out there and show those beer-infused guys who founded this
country -- and who scribbled down all of that constitutional
nonsense -- just how obsolete their notions really are in the 21st
century!
Make Big Brother Mother Bell proud!
And thank *you* for using AT&T.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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