McCarthyism 2.0

October 30, 2007

Technology blog Mashable looks through an FBI document dump and explains how AT&T got so good at discarding their customers’ personal rights. The layman’s explanation seems to be that by use of several seemingly simple data-mining algorithms, they scan through call logs and track the connections between phone numbers.

clipped from mashable.com
Essentially, if you talk to someone who talks to terrorists, your phone records could be in scrutiny. The research for this technology was done pre-2000, in an effort by AT&T to curtail those who made fraudulent credit-card calls, but has since been re-applied by the FBI to discern new people of interest.� Gone are the days of the McCarthy era, when folks were solicited to name names - your phone company now (at no extra cost to you!) provides this service for you.

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