Do Telecom companies keep a shadow phone bill ?

Here is an idea that deepens the feeling of all pervading surveillance. Each quarter the telecoms companies sends or just charges you for the outbound calls made to other numbers. You will also get a bill of the calls made to your mobile phone if the phone has roamed to another area. If you have itemized billing enabled or a web account you can even see the list of calls made, time, date and the cost associated.

That's all very well and those web accounts are useful for those doing surveillance, just one master password is needed for all the phone accounts at a single company. To complete the picture for the watchers that password will enable the shadow phone bill that you never see. On that shadow bill are all the times, date and phone numbers of the inbound calls made to the target number.

The next step is to pull the complete phone bills of those inbound and outbound numbers and so on three or fours steps out. Once consolidated a complete picture of who is talking to who around the target number is generated.

Lets not get too uneasy but remember ... "The telecoms companies keep shadow phone bills and know who is calling you."

Gannett

PS: Like all the best rumors this has yet to be proved.

According to your recent phone calls and private letters you may be interested in these products ...

"Hi, I am calling from you local phone company. We know that you have been talking with your friends about getting a new car. Have you considered a Ford from Fred Blogs your local dealer ?"

If you had call like this you certainly would be outraged. How can a phone company justify wire tapping you so that they can make money pushing adverts ?

If you postman said "I have read your banks statements, may be you should consider a loan from Sharky loan company." You would be concerned. We take for granted the separation between communication providers and processors.

We expect our phone calls, mail and web activity to be secure end-to-end. An agreed exception is hunting for criminals but even in that example "Probable cause" has to be established before the interception occurs. However such interception is essentiality what BT/Phorm have been doing and plan to do across the data network. By reading your web browsing habits BT and other ISPs plan to deliver content targeted adverts.

Interception of phone and data communications is a key privacy area, in which the few public safeguards have been hard to secure and protect. To see a blatant example of illegal interception just brushed under the carpet for commercial reasons is hard to stomach.

Gannett