The new privacy policy of telecommunications behemoth AT&T may suck out and destroy your rights to privacy, but at least the text is “easier to read”. This is the reason, not an evil Orwellian scheme to track Americans’ every conversation, that AT&T spokesman John Britton said the corporation set a new policy to legally safeguard its sharing customers’ information with the National Security Agency (NSA).

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

The digital freedom watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation doesn’t buy it.

The new policy, which states that AT&T, not its customers, “own” their personal information, is a reaction to the EFF’s class action lawsuit against the company. In the lawsuit, the EFF alleges AT&T has allowed the US government near total access to more than 300 terabytes of customer information. By opening its “Daytona” database, one of the largest in the world, to the government’s data-mining and wiretapping programme, EFF says the company has violated the privacy of its customers, as well as whom they email and call, and broken communications privacy laws.

These are not mere accusations, EFF has evidence. Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, provided a declaration for the case in which he testifies to seeing a secret room in the AT&T San Francisco switching center in which National Security Agents shunted people’s internet traffic to data-mining equipment.

Since AT&T’s new privacy policy is now a condition for service, current customers have no way to avoid being becoming a possible target except by switching providers. But, there are many other ways to protest against AT&T’s behaviour.

• Call AT&T’s free customer service number (US only) 1-800-222-0300 to complain, or simply leave the phone off the hook and run up its expenses.
• Make AT&T users aware of the changes to their privacy policy
• You can donate to the EFF to make sure they can continue their case against AT&T.
• Encourage AT&T users to change companies.
• Call the National Security Agency and complain at 001-301-688-6524. You can also e-mail the agency at nsapao@nsa.gov.
• Call the White House and say just how you feel about the President Bush’s wiretapping and data mining programme. The phone number is: 202-456-1111. You can also e-mail at: comments@whitehouse.gov.