Scumbag AT&T and its Gigapower

Shocking information at this ars technica link:

AT&T’s plan to watch your Web browsing—and what you can do about it

"If you have AT&T’s gigabit Internet service and wonder why it seems so affordable, here's the reason—AT&T is boosting profits by rerouting all your Web browsing to an in-house traffic scanning platform, analyzing your Internet habits, then using the results to deliver personalized ads to the websites you visit, e-mail to your inbox, and junk mail to your front door."

For an amazingly low price you can get this "service".  AT&T records everything a subscriber does on the internet because the subscriber agrees to it as a term of service.  Don't like that?  Then don't buy the service.  However it is not entirely clear up front what AT&T is doing (spying upon and using).  I agree that it is everything and is in fact deep packet inspection perhaps using the very same systems funded and pioneered by the NSA.

Recently I wrote about the FBI getting intelligence information through a partnership with private enterprise to access its Big Data.

Wadda ya think?  Might the FBI want to cozy up to AT&T to have access to its deep packet inspection big data base for data mining?  Might the FBI just be following the business model of the NSA?  Why duplicate the intelligence collection and storage of free private enterprise?  Buy it from them and concentrate on the collection of Intelligence in domains that free private enterprise does not operate.  That domain is becoming smaller every day.

AT&T says they never sell info to a third party.  What about giving it in return for favors?  Or putting something on the table in front of someone and walking out of the room for a cup of coffee?  "back in 5 minutes, wink, wink.  Where is their definition of terms and the term "sell.   It's incredibly unlikely that the same government that granted AT&T's immunity will turn around and sign off on using AT&T's behavior to squash a merger. If the merger is blocked, it will be due to more practical considerations

What AT&T is doing is a new business model.  Become the only or by far the cheapest provider of Internet service with the terms and condition that they can collect and use in any way all of your communications on the World Wide Web.  All of your communications are routed exclusively through their services.

Don't like that?

Then either don't subscribe to our services or pay a higher price for privacy.

The unstated writing on the wall:

If you choose to pay a higher price for complete privacy where we do not collect and store everything and do deep packet inspection then we inform the NSA (for a price) of your choice and they do what we promise not to do.

Think that might be what really happens?

Hey, nothing personal, its just business.