Her letter came on the heels of what she believed to be contradictory testimony from AT&T Chief Privacy Officer Dorothy Attwood on Thursday. During a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee, Attwood said AT&T does not use "deep packet inspection," a controversial type of network filtering that could be used to build extensive customer profiles and offer specialized content and advertising without consent. Attwood said AT&T would not use consumer information for that purpose "without an affirmative, advance action by the consumer." In August 2008, Attwood told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that AT&T does not engage in behavioral advertising but the company is listed as a client of AudienceScience, which offers that service.

"As an ISP, we do not track our customer's data across unrelated Web sites to create a profile for behavioral advertising, or hire other firms to do so on our behalf," an AT&T spokesman told Tech Daily Dose. He said his company's relationship with AudienceScience is as an advertiser of AT&T products and services. Suggestions that AT&T is engaging in behavioral advertising by selling customer information are "flat wrong," he said. The spokesman added that AT&T has consistently told Congress it uses ad networks. In related news, a testimonial listed on AudienceScience's Web site from MEC Interaction, which had AT&T as a client, has been removed. The message read: "AudienceScience rocks and I recommend using them for all of your BT campaigns."