That doesn't excuse this. If these records only existed so they could give them to the NSA at a later time, that further illustrates the dangers of accommodating the agency's desire for access to data generated from the U.S. Telecom backbone.
If they are obligated to give the data to the NSA, they should give it to them in real time and then delete their own logs as soon as they no longer need them.
So do other ISPs. Yet AT&T is by far the worst of all of them with regards to customer privacy.
Did you know that AT&T has a commercial product where they sell Metadata of websites visited (unclear if it's only Netflow or if it includes DNS lookups too) to law enforcement and private investigators?
> Did you know that AT&T has a commercial product where they sell Metadata of websites visited (unclear if it's only Netflow or if it includes DNS lookups too) to law enforcement
Do you think that only AT&T does it ? Welcome to democracy, my friend. /s
