I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while now, but what with article deadlines, ecycolpedia entries, the NUDA Summer School, and Euro-SSIG, I’m just now getting around to it. Back in June, at&t briefly flirted with the idea of using the scandal surrounding their illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens’ domestic and international communications as an actual marketing strategy. At the time I took screen shots and video of the campaign that was mockingly dubbed by at&t as “The Online Liberation Movement (sm).” Shortly after going live at&t pulled the entire campaign in light of public outrage.

“The Online Liberation Movement (sm),” with its “simplify. organize. liberate.” motto,  is a collection of fictitious individuals who seek cyber-liberation through at&t’s online billing system (of course). Most interesting is “Ms. Suspicious,” a member of the “movement” who is presented as a paranoid, privacy-obsessed and “suspicious” customer. Below is a video recording I made of the ad, note Ms. Suspicious’s “keep out!” post-it on her laptop and the poster behind her of Uncle Sam’s hand covering a man’s mouth above the words “SILENCE means security.”

So, why is Ms. Suspicious so damn… suspicious? It couldn’t have anything to do with at&t’s illegal partnership with the NSA to spy on Americans, their development of a mass surveillance programing language,  their recent censorship of Pearl Jam, or their anti-free speech “can’t-criticize-us” contracts that all their customers must abide by. Nope, Ms. Suspicious is just some freaky civil libertarian who needs to calm down and find liberation through at&t’s new online banking system…