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Saturday, June 24, 2006

In the mail....

Yesterday, the mailman brought cheer with the latest Poets & Writers.
Articles that look especially interesting:
  1. Poetry - Built to Last
  2. Five Debut Authors
  3. After The Flood - A Writer Says Goodbye to Her books
  4. The Writer's Web Site - Build It and They Will Come

There are a host of other yummy looking tid-bits between the pages. Those who may not be familiar with P & W should be aware that it also has great resources for:

  • grants and awards
  • contests
  • conferences & residencies
  • calls for manuscripts

Off the subject of poetry & writing for a moment but another subject that has peeked my interest of late, the arrogance of AT&T.

Thursday USA today reported that AT&T was adopting a new privacy policy that requires internet customers to consent to its ownership of their account information and authorizes it to tract consumer usage.

This policy change comes as AT&T is named as a defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation that accuses AT& T with improperly sharing customers' private phone and internet records with the federal government without any court orders or oversight.

What the new language is saying to AT&T customers is this, "While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T. As Such, AT&T may disclose such records to protect its legitimate business interests..."

The USA Today article also states that the new policy drops a reference stating that company "does not access, read, upload, or store data contained in or delivered from private files without the member's authorization."

The EDT lawsuit accuses AT&T with providing the federal government with access to customer records on virtually all phone based communications since 2001.

I WOULD RECOMMEND PEOPLE CONSIDER BOYCOTTING ALL AT&T SERVICES - PHONE AND INTERNET. THEY OBVIOUSLY HAVE NOTHING BUT CONTEMPT FOR THE PRIVACY RIGHTS OF THEIR CUSTOMERS.

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