One of the telcos involved in the US government spying scandal has told a congressional inquiry that Google is up to much worse than anything it dreamed up.

AT&T said that online advertising networks were more dangerous than the fledgling plans and dreams of ISPs to install eavesdropping equipment inside their internet pipes to serve tailored ads to their customers. AT&T denies that it currently digs deep into the net habits of its users for the purpose of developing a profile of a particular consumer's online behaviour. However, it says it may run some kind of snooping in the future using so-called Deep Packet Inspection technology.

The company rightly says could be also be used to detect copyright infringement, speed up packets of streaming video and detect child pornography. Google can know almost as much a snooping ISP could. If customers install Google's toolbar and don't know to opt out of Google's Web History program, they can be telling the search engine outfit everything about themselves. And if Google does combine its third-party cookie information, with user's search histories, with Gmail summaries, and with Google Analytics data, among other data sources, it would be a proper domestic intelligence agency.

Ironically AT&T is currently facing a class action lawsuit for allegedly helping the NSA spy on its customers. But that is ok because NSA is not an advertising agency. X

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