Thomas’s posterous

Following the report earlier this week that the FBI regularly broke the ECPA law, in obtaining information from telcos without going through the proper process (and, in some cases using just a post it note!), some interesting details from the full report have come to light. The two key ones? First, "the Obama administration issued a secret rule almost two weeks ago saying it was legal for the FBI to have skirted federal privacy protections." And, second, the original idea to use these bogus "exigent letters" didn't come from the FBI, but from an AT&T employee.

Thanks for @malley99 for linking me to the Techdirt story. Obama's engaged in the same BS as I railed against the Bush administration for, and that's a deal breaker for me.

I'll rant sometime about the importance of freedom and privacy, but not right now. AT&T catches flak in the article for good reason, but the broader issue is that all telecom companies are in bed with the government in these issues. If AT&T were the only ones, I'd be paying my early termination fees and taking my family to Verizon. As it stands, it gives me great pause about buying any more AT&T products.

But unfortunately, just as we have no competition in the political space (They're all liars) we have no real competition in the communications space. I can't buy DSL from anybody else.