[AusNOG] Telstra's Texan Teaser - Tin Foil Stetsun anyone?

[Mark Newton]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 05:17:02AM +0200, Geoff Huston wrote:

 > Somehow we've managed to cross a dangerous line in the last few years. It
 > used to be that carriers operated under the ethos, if not the regulatory
 > framework, of a common carrier. These days it seems to be a pervasive
 > attitude of "all your packets belong to us."

Quite.

In the PSTN days it'd never even occur to anyone to spark a controversy
like this, because carriers didn't sell transcripts of everyone's phone
activitie to third parties.

But those same carriers seem to think nothing of not only disclosing
who everyone is communicating with, but in some cases even sending the
contents of the communications themselves (e.g., "GET http://foo HTTP/1.0" --
that's call content, not call metadata!)

Everyone at all levels of the industry know that customers react with instant
revulsion to having their browser history tracked and disclosed to third
parties.  Telstra didn't go into this ignorantly; they knew full well that
it was a profoundly hostile act to launch on an unsuspecting public, that's
why they didn't announce it and provided a misleading response to 
scmagazine.com.au when they were originally quizzed about it.

Today's blog message says "... our customers trust is the most important
thing to us."  Their behaviour strongly suggests that maybe that's more 
of an aspiration than a reality, and that customers are perfectly justified
in mistrusting them.
http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2012/06/27/update-on-telstras-mobile-cyber-safety-tool/

One of the important points that needs to come through is this:

"You're the phone company, not my mother. I shouldn't have to invite you
into my private personal life to view web pages."

   - mark