Guilt By Assosciation

I was perusing a rather interesting link about a programming language that AT&T created that is particularly useful for doing data mining on collections of human interactions. Like people calling one another ...

It might be a little surprising, but I have no issue with AT&T doing this. They not only did not hide this information, but published a research paper on it, and released a publicly available version complete with a developers guide.

Of interest to privacy advocates is the following quote:

A 2004 paper published in ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems shows how Hancock code can sift calling card records, long distance calls, IP addresses and internet traffic dumps, and even track the physical movements of mobile phone customers as their signal moves from cell site to cell site.

Again, what we are seeing is capability transparency and I am ok with that. Just remember that quote when you think that your movement is anonymous (and that was several years ago). Newer phones have gps capability built in anyway, which is far simpler to use ...

So what is pissing me off? This comment is:

So, what's the problem with a little data mining? Since the telco owns the call records, and you don't, they can mine all the data they want, and give it to whomever they want. If you don't want the telco to know you are calling hookers, or pushers, then don't call them.

It's not called the Public Switched Telephone Network for nothing!

bb

Ok, so here goes. I am sick to death of these Ann Rand reading libertarian dreaming chronic masturbators*. We are a society of laws which describe what a corporation can and can not do with public information that they have been granted access to by the FCC. What does Public Switched Telephone Network mean anyway?? This is the same stupid thoughtless 'daddy knows best' attitude that started us down this long dark road of corporatist neo-fascism. Who the fuck came up with the stupid idea that corporations are somehow better at getting things done?

A corporation maximizes shareholder value. They do not particularly care about you rights, or your cat or your privacy except in that class action lawsuits might infringe on the bottom line. If you believe that google really acts in a 'do no evil' manner, you are far less cynical than I.

There is too much work to do for me to go on, which is probably for the better.

(*as an aside, this word spellchecks to 'bushmasters', 'masterstroke' and 'burgomasters'. Go figure.)