Tech Volta

Recent college grad, .NET developer, and web enthusiast

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AT&T in Bush’s Pocket

August 15th, 2007 · 6 Comments

Oh it is all becoming clear.

switch

Recently, AT&T admitted to editing Webcast’s of Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza. What is truly amazing about this story is that “the mistakes of our webcast provider” let the F-bomb drop 20 times, yet they censored negative comments about Bush. Also, in a press release AT&T said this wasn’t the first time things like this has happened! This is such a major violation of 1st Amendment Rights; I think it is called Freedom of Speech? Maybe? Class Action Suit coming soon?

I don’t see how anybody can truly be surprised of actions like this. It is obviously clear that AT&T is a lackey of the Bush Administration. I will point out the whole NSA Warrant-less Wiretaps program that was recently brought to light. It was happening with AT&T and is most likely happening elsewhere.

As an American I am opposed to any domestic surveillance program and there’s a good article on crooks and liars that gives the statistics. 73% of all Americans disapprove of the spying program. That’s a high number and hopefully people in our government will wake up.

What this all comes down to is a law from 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that lays the framework for such “spying” programs. It also has been “udpated” 5 times since 2001, strange huh? It is all very complicated and depressing, please visit the csmonitor’s article on Warant-less Wiretaps Expanded for more information.

Tags: life · politics · rights · technology

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Durwin // Aug 15, 2007 at 6:50 pm

    I agree that Pearl Jam should have not been edited because they were not warned in advance. I think At&t has the right to control the content on their site. Just make it clear to anyone using the site (like Pearl Jam)in advance that this could happen.

  • 2 Zak Nicola // Aug 17, 2007 at 1:10 am

    Funny I should come to your blog and find this post, just seconds after talking with my wife about how odd it is that AT&T seems to be getting their hand’s into every aspect of the communication industry. The merge that took place in December last year between AT&T and BellSouth set them up for “Premier Global Communications Company”

    http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=4800&cdvn=news&newsarticleid=22860

    And if you really want to get a bigger look at things, you should check out zeitgeistmovie.com
    (it starts out a lil odd, but it really drops the info after the montage of canon fire)

  • 3 brent // Aug 17, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    Thanks for the good information. I will check that movie out looks strange!

  • 4 ali eteraz // Aug 18, 2007 at 2:16 am

    Plural Politics has very good evaluation of the new fisa amendment

    http://eteraz.org/2007/08/11/short-primer-on-new-fisa/

    as well as inquiry into a case of actual wiretapping by nsa where they sent their illegal wiretap log to the people they were wiretapping

    http://eteraz.org/2007/08/16/govt-sends-record-of-illegal-wiretapping-to-those-it-was-wiretapping/

    please add plural politics to your favorite sites

    http://eteraz.org/about/

  • 5 You Had Me At Headline | Lost in Technology // Sep 2, 2007 at 11:52 am

    [...] most read article currently is AT&T in Bush’s pocket and I think this is a good example of a great headline. It is short, has action, summarizes the [...]

  • 6 Equal Access to the Net- A thing of the past? « Nice, Smile // Sep 9, 2007 at 3:18 am

    [...] surprise really. There has been talk around the net that AT&T may have some friends in high places and with things going the way they are, those friends are inline to make a considerable amount of [...]