“We don’t see this as anything new. Our goal was to make the policy easier to read and easier for customers to understand.”

- AT&T spokesman John Britton’s explanation of their new “privacy policy”, which now says that AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests”. The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service — something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited by law from doing. Moreover, AT&T now requires customers to agree to the updated privacy policy as a condition of service. Ray Everett-Church, a Silicon Valley privacy consultant, said it seems clear that AT&T has substantially modified its privacy policy in light of revelations about the government’s domestic spying program. “It’s obvious that they are trying to stretch their blanket pretty tightly to cover as many exposed bits as possible.”

So if you have phone service or TV service from AT&T (including the former SBC) they own the records of who you call, what videos you watch, and who knows what else, and can use them however they want.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/21/BUG9VJHB9C1.DTL&hw=at&sn=002&sc=870

“They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.”

- The US Military double-speaks that the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, were actually acts of war. Detainees at “Gitmo” are being held indefinitely without formal charges, without legal representation, and without judicial review. Some have been held for more than three years. The UK constitutional affairs minister says the camp should be moved to the US or shut down. “If it’s perfectly legal and there’s nothing going wrong there - well, why don’t they have it in America and then the American court system can supervise it?”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5068606.stm

“If the president of the U.S. started talking about how Saturn was coming into the wrong quadrant and is therefore not a good time to launch a war, one would hope that the whole White House press corps would descend on him with a straitjacket. This would be terrifying — to hear somebody with so much power basing any part of his decision-making process on something as disreputable as astrology. Yet we don’t have the same response when he’s clearly basing some part of his deliberation on faith.”

- Sam Harris, discussing how when it comes to faith-based violence, religious moderates are part of the problem, not the solution.

http://www.alternet.org/story/36195