Thanks to Alex for pointing me to another interesting article relevant to my current interest in protecting mobile phone users' data and privacy. And yes, this is a shameless reposting of information, but I felt it was too important to pass up. In discussion on the importance of protecting human rights activists and ordinary citizens from their governments when transmitting and posting sensitive information and media in countries in turmoil, specifically many African countries, none of us in the freeformed group ever considered that concern over such blatant invasions of privacy were as relevant here yet (not so much because we thought the government wasn't capable of encouraging service providers to invade their customer's rights, they have proven they are, but moreso because we assumed that such companies would be too concerned that their customers would not put up with it). Apparently, AT&T has proven us wrong, although it will be interesting to see how their new policy is received among current users. Basically, their new privacy policy states that AT&T ,not customers, owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process." The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service -- something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing. Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service -- a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers' recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others.

Hopefully, AT&T users will read the fine print. This is really scary.