United States – July 12, 2024
AT&T revealed in a recent regulatory filing that a hacker managed to access and steal the call and text records of “almost all” its customers. After discovering on April 19th that a hacker had allegedly gained unauthorized access to and copied AT&T call logs, the company initiated an investigation, as stated in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The hacker unlawfully infiltrated an AT&T workspace on a third-party cloud platform and removed files containing AT&T customer call and text interactions that occurred from May 1 to October 31, 2022, according to AT&T’s disclosure. Furthermore, data for a “very small number” of customers was also compromised on January 2, 2023, as per a separate AT&T release.
The compromised data comprises records of calls and texts from nearly all of AT&T’s mobile customers, customers of mobile virtual network operators utilizing AT&T’s wireless network, and AT&T’s landline customers who communicated with those cellular numbers.
A hack or an inside job?
Given the timeliness of the hack, it is suspicious given the nature and immediate government involvement. Could the security breach be a staged circumvention of the Fourth Amendment, which protects the right of the people to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government?
If this is the case, then the government will have warrantless access to millions of private citizen communications through “evidence” just before an election. Although none of this is confirmed, there remains the possibility.
