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Comment by JoshTriplett | Hacker News Reader

"AT&T reveals it has records of cellular customers calls and texts"

These records should have been deleted at the latest at the point where they're no longer relevant for billing. (Which also means that for customers with unlimited calling/texting, there shouldn't be any records in the first place.)

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They keep all records for 7 years because the US Federal Government asked them to, not because they legally have to, but same with T-Mobile and Verizon: https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vqkv/how-fbi-gets-phone-da...

Wasn't there some telco executive that was tossed in jail not long after 9/11 because he didn't want to play along with the government and keep data around forever?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio

> Joseph P. Nacchio was the only head of a communications company to demand a court order, or approval under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in order to turn over communications records to the NSA.[11]

AT&T is well known for working with NSA — 33 Thomas St [1]

[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/11/16/the-nsas-spy-hub-in-new-...

That doesn't excuse this. If these records only existed so they could give them to the NSA at a later time, that further illustrates the dangers of accommodating the agency's desire for access to data generated from the U.S. Telecom backbone.

If they are obligated to give the data to the NSA, they should give it to them in real time and then delete their own logs as soon as they no longer need them.

It does explain it though. By coincidence they also get billions of dollars in federal subsidies

So do other ISPs. Yet AT&T is by far the worst of all of them with regards to customer privacy.

Did you know that AT&T has a commercial product where they sell Metadata of websites visited (unclear if it's only Netflow or if it includes DNS lookups too) to law enforcement and private investigators?

AT&T is a blight on the privacy of U.S. citizens.

> Did you know that AT&T has a commercial product where they sell Metadata of websites visited (unclear if it's only Netflow or if it includes DNS lookups too) to law enforcement

Do you think that only AT&T does it ? Welcome to democracy, my friend. /s

For their landline customers? I'm not aware of any other ISP that's so shamelessly brazen about the practice.

I wish that were the world we live in.

This is from the Snowflake breach, meaning this database was an "AI Powered Unified Data Platform." It almost feels like the erosion of our privacy is fueling the growth of allot companies.

I really hope that the boogeyman is real and all this was worth it.

I believe this practice was followed only in postwar France, and I think even there has long been jettisoned. It's been a while since I got a French phone bill though.

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