Privacy is the one issue where liberals are completely united, along with anyone who truly deserves the ‘conservative’ label. Government intrusion is rapidly approaching Soviet levels. Yet the Democrats have yet to wake up to the fact that this is a campaign winner. The golden egg. The 2006 equivalent of a four-leaf clover. It’s happening now, everybody hates it, and the Repugnant Republicans can’t say boo about it because they’re the ones doing it!

Right on cue, AT&T has now revised their terms and conditions to reflect their viewpoint that they retain ownership of everything you do on their network, and will do with it whatever they damn well feel like with it thank you very much:

Revising its privacy policy, AT&T Inc. said Wednesday that personal account information was owned by the company and might be shared with authorities to investigate "potential threats."

"While your account information may be personal to you, these records constitute business records that are owned by AT&T," the company will tell customers in a policy revision that will go into force Friday.

A copy of the new terms can be found here. As though this latest outrage isn’t enough, the government has lost yet another laptop with data on millions of citizens. Your blood still not boiling? Then how about this:

Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

But don’t worry, these bank records are searched on a limited basis and only for known Al-Qu’eda members. Ok, well they might be targeting Americans, but only if they do business overseas with known Al-Qu’eda agents. Er, well maybe it’s Americans dealing with Americans, but only when one party is overseas. Ok, well it’s pretty much everybody, but it’s all done for the War on Terror. Terrorism. Terror. 9-11. September the 11th. Al-qu’eda.

Get it?