AT&T Finally Caves; Agrees To Issue A Transparency Report
from the but-how-transparent-will-it-be? dept
With Verizon agreeing to issue a transparency report concerning government requests for information (catching up with pretty much every major internet company), it was really only a matter of time until the other major telco holdout, AT&T caved. And, indeed, just about 24 hours later, AT&T agreed to issue a similar transparency report. The press release is also the first time that AT&T appears to have made any actual statement concerning the reports of its detailed cooperation with the NSA:- Protecting our customers' information and privacy is paramount. Everywhere we operate, we go to great lengths to make sure our customers' data is safe and secure. And we do so in compliance with the laws of the country where the service is provided.
- When we receive a government request for customer information, whether it's a court order, a subpoena, or other method, we ensure that the request and our response are completely lawful and proper in that country.
- We work hard to make sure that the requests or orders are valid and that our response to them is lawful. We've challenged court orders, subpoenas and other requests from local, state and federal governmental entities – and will continue to do so, if we believe they are unlawful.
- We do not allow any government agency to connect directly to our network to gather, review or retrieve our customers' information.
- We only provide wireless customer location data in response to a court order except in the rare cases in which an emergency compels us to do so. Examples include when law enforcement enlists us to locate a missing child or a kidnapping suspect, and they provide us assurance that a real emergency affecting human life exists.
Just the fact that it's taken over six months for AT&T to even remotely say anything on this, and that they finally make this announcement just as everyone's disappearing for the holidays, suggests how "seriously" the company actually takes this issue.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: privacy, transparency report
Companies: at&t
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Can't believe they issued a statement that is demonstrably false. Must have been written by someone at the NSA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
not as hard as they work to stop issuing statements about what requests the NSA etc want about customers to customers!
as for the challenging of court orders etc, prove it!!
you're so full of shit AT&T, that without proof, no one believes a thing you say!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm kind of glad this happened to me though. It opened my eyes to the fact it doesn't matter how much encryption I use on a cellphone, because chances are the underlying hardware, firmware, and device drivers are probably compromised with closed-source proprietary backdoors.
I was a fool to think I could secure my communications on a backdoored cellphone device, by using encryption. If anyone doesn't think cellphones are backdoored, please ask the leaders of Brazil, Germany, and Mexico what their opinions on the matter are.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
A smartphone is a pretty good piece of computing gear and I don't have a say? I can't get your piece of bullshit crap app off much less put up a firewall of any comms on it?
Fuck you AT&T et al. Fuck you.
Plug the NSA behind that and .. it's all gone.
All those folks that have zero tech handling experience - owned.
My country is disgusting.
Immunity. Suck. my. god. damned. cock. in. hell.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
We do not allow any government agency to connect directly to our network
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No need to when indirect connections work fine.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Response to: Anonymous Coward on Dec 20th, 2013 @ 6:12pm
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
annoying calls
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Other Method
Yeah, "other method", like a Post-It note.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/01/fbi-replaced-legal-process-post-it-notes-obtain-ph
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
"We do not allow any government agency to connect directly to our network"
Of course not, there's a cable in between!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]