This Phone is Tapped by FredoAlvarez/flickr)

Recently, AT&T began airing and displaying ads touting the international reach of their mobile phone service. The ad pictured above, on the train platform of the White Flint Metro station in Rockville, got an addition. The corporate slogan “Your World. Delivered.” was covered up with a decal that says,

THIS PHONE IS TAPPED. Your conversation is being monitored by the U.S. goverment courtesy of the US Patriot Act of 2001, Sec. 216 of which permits all phone calls to be recorded without a warrant or notification.

The decals are produced by an organization called CrimethInc. By the looks of it, that particular decal once had a home on a public telephone’s receiver.

It rather reminded me of a case the Electronic Frontier Foundation worked on last year against AT&T. The company’s slogan was parodied as “Your World. Delivered. To the NSA.“

These are my links for 18 Jun:

• Daily Blog Tips - You don?t need to know much about SEO to realize links are the golden road to blog promotion.
• Fluther: Tap the Collective - A new twist on social question and answer sites.
• 25 Web Sites to Watch - The Internet is evolving in new and inventive ways thanks to mashups that pull data from all over the Web and to AJAX-based interfaces that give sites the same degree of interactivity and responsiveness that desktop apps possess.
• The great iPhone hunt of 2007 | CNET News.com - Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently gave free advice to a columnist asking how to get an iPhone when they go on sale: head to an AT&T store, Jobs suggested, rather than Apple’s own retail outlets.
• Mozilla exec calls Apple’s Safari plan ‘duopolistic’ - Mozilla’s chief operating officer, John Lilly, is calling Steve Jobs’ plans for building Safari’s market share “out of date” and “duopolistic.”
• Dell apologizes for remove-this-blog-post-or-else nastygram | Tech news blog - CNET News.com - A blog post at Consumerist.com offering tips on buying from Dell drew a nasty cease-and-desist letter from the company’s attorney and then, in quick succession, a chastened apology from a Dell manager.
• Microwave popcorn warning memo - Unedited memo sent out to City of Seattle employees.
• 15 Best Game Show Hosts - TIME Magazine ranks 15 best game show hosts; Bob Barker comes out on top.

These are my links for 7 Jun:

• “Are We Rome?” | Salon Books - Hollowed out by arrogance, corruption and a bloated military, the greatest empire the world has ever known fell. Is America doomed to follow in its footsteps?
• What was so special about the ‘57 Chevy? - Why an otherwise unremarkable car has a devoted following.
• Deluge of peanuts brings back ‘Jericho’ TV show - An online protest involving 20 tons of peanuts delivered to CBS Entertainment in New York and California has succeeded in bringing back the television show Jericho, which the network canceled last month.
• Apple, AT&T stores prepare for iPhone frenzy | CNET News.com - With a little over two weeks until the iPhone hits store shelves, Apple and AT&T retail sales representatives say they are preparing for a quick sellout and huge crowds on the June 29 launch date.