Craig Galbraith Blog: Take My Privacy, Please

When I read about the police chief suing AT&T over releasing his work cell records to his wife, it reminded me of the old Henny Youngman one-liner, hence the title of this blog.

The short of it is this: A woman suspected her husband, a small-town police chief, of having an affair with an old high school flame. He had been talking to the woman on his work cell, but denied it when his wife confronted him. Not convinced, she called AT&T and got confirmation that he had been talking to the woman. Then he admitted it, but said it was part of a criminal investigation, and he lied to his wife to save her from misplaced concern. Now he’s suing AT&T for all kinds of mental anguish.

What makes this story even more interesting is that this isn’t novel. In May, we reported about a woman in Canada who was suing Rogers for combining her wireless bill with her family’s bill for Internet and cable TV service, exposing to her husband the calls she was making to her lover. Her husband wound up leaving her and their two children.

While, as the casual reader, it’s easy to be entertained by these stories, they raise serious questions about the privacy that we expect from simply talking on the phone and the role that the carriers have in protecting us. Now that practically everyone carries a cell phone, it’s the duty of AT&T, Verizon Wireless and the rest to step up their game to protect us. Obviously, the cases I mentioned above are not representative of the biggest security threat – terrorists and cyber-criminals who threaten our national and financial security – but they are examples of how simple oversight and poor judgment can lead to serious consequences. I mean, what if, in the first example above, the caller had been someone posing as the chief’s wife? They might have been able to get critical information related to a criminal case.

Of course, we’re just a few years removed from one of the biggest controversies of the Bush era, when phone companies got the green light to go too far. AT&T was even accused of being complicit in illegal wiretapping for the Administration.

Finding a middle ground between privacy and an invasion of privacy will continue to get more difficult as new wireless technologies are adopted, more operating systems are developed and hackers become even more sophisticated. Let’s hope the carriers are up to the challenge. Otherwise, cheating spouses will be the least of our concerns.