AT&T has rewritten its privacy policy to enable it to track customer's television viewing and to state that it owns its customer phone-call logs, reports CNNMoney.com.

I would drop this company if you buy anything from it; otherwise, all companies will do this.

See the full article:

AT&T Disconnects Privacy Protections
by Owen Thomas and Oliver Ryan
CNNMoney.com 06-22-06

We can't help but admire San Francisco Chronicle columnist David Lazarus. While a tad overserious, the high-tech consumer crusader is at his best when catching corporate PR people in the act of contradicting themselves.

Take his ruthless dissection of AT&T's new privacy policy, for example. "We don't see this as anything new," AT&T spokesman John Britton told Lazarus. That was Britton's first mistake. Lazarus then proceeds to lay out how the privacy policy now informs customers that AT&T, not the customer, owns the personal information like calling records that AT&T stores, and that the new policy lacks an acknowledgement found in the old policy that "privacy is an important issue for our customers and members." AT&T's new policy also says that it will track what customers watch on AT&T's satellite and Internet TV services -- a practice seemingly barred by a 1984 federal law that forbids cable and satellite TV providers from collecting or disclosing information about viewing habits.

AT&T spokesman Britton then went on to suggest that AT&T customers ought to hone their mind-reading skills. "There were many things that were implied in the last policy," Britton told Lazarus. "We're just clarifying the last policy." AT&T customers, in other words, were supposed to deduce from a privacy policy that explicitly told customers that privacy was important that, in fact, it didn't matter after all. If so, Britton's claim that the new policy is "easier to read" may be the only straightforward thing he said.

Real Tech News says that the change in privacy policies is really a response to the controversy over AT&T's "alleged participation in [National Security Agency] wiretapping." The new policy includes language that appears to cover any disclosure of records in a government investigation.

money.cnn.com/blogs/browser/2006/06/att-disconnects-privacy-protections.html