Telecom Trends

Mark: Read your blog entry from today and I have to tell you I'm have a hard time accepting AT&T's policy and would have a harder time accepting such a polcy if Rogers, Bell, etc. adopted it.

In their policy, AT&T asserts that customer calling and Internet records are corporate property. The policy states "While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T and, as such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process".

Among other things, this probably will mean that for broadband Internet customers they will collect information about which Web pages they view, how much time is spent on each page and what links are clicked.

Let's think about this for a while. I don't mind them claiming that the facts that I am a broadband Internet customer, what package I'm buying (i.e. speed), how much time I spend on the Internet, and how much I'm paying for the service are business records because these are the things that constitute my business relationship with them as a customer. Which sites/pages I go to/view and how much time I spend on each page has no bearing on that relationship.

I've been trying to apply this to other situations. I have a Markham Public Library card. I take it to the library to take out a book about fertilizers becasue I want to know how to grow larger tomatoes. A section of one of the chapters in this book happens to deal with the fertilizer of choice of terrorist bomb makers. AT&T's policy would suggest that, in addition to the Library having information about my having a library card that is valid, if I currently have, or have had, any books go overdue, and whether or not I've paid any fines due out, and the title of the book I'm taking out, that it's the library's business to keep information about the contents of each book in my file.

This may be a crude example but the point is there are things that define my business relationship with a service provider that in addition to being personal belong to them so they can provide the service. However, there are other things in that business relationship that are personal but have no bearing on the provision of service and thus, in my mind, they have no business claiming it's theirs to do with what they want.

As I write this, I recall a situation from the late 80's/early 90's in the U.S. where a candidate for public office had his candidacy ruined when the court allowed information about his video rentals to be made public. Turned out he had rented a few porn videos and, right away, he became a threat to the world. If one were to apply AT&T' policy in this context, they would say that in addition to information about whether I'm an approved customer, that I don't have any videos out that are overdue, that I'm taking out a certain number of videos on such-and-such a date, and that I've paid all my fees being "business records", the fact that one of them may be an 'adult or restricted or porn' video is also part of their business records. To that I would say B.S.. It's a personal preference not a piece of their business records and, as a personal preference, it should be protected under their obligation to protect my privacy.

Despite AT&T's claim that this new policy does not reflect any change from what they have been doing, what they've done is redefined customer information as their property by saying 'it's not your record its our record and as such you don't own it and, as a result, we're no longer obligated to protect it under privacy legislation'. Boy, that's a scary situation to think about. Online habits should be considered to be the property of the consumer and not commoditized by the Internet service provider to be given away whenever anyone asks for it.

It will be interesting to see what customers do and what the courts and privacy advocates do in response to AT&T's actions.