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Comment by aroch | Hacker News Reader

This is about them voluntarily giving guest information to ICE without informing the guests. Which caused actual harm to at least 6 residents in the state of Washington. There's no federal law saying that hotels must provide detailed guest info (name, DOB, drivers license, car license plate, room number, and other info) and the hotel. So my plain reading of their terms would suggest that data should only be shared "during the discovery process in litigation [or] pursuant to a court order"

Washington state however has a statute that protects consumers from such data sharing.

(Also, I added a link to the terms in an edit that also fixed formatting. Wasn't my intention to be deceptive by omitting it)

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You're plain reading of the terms skipped over the first part:

"We may disclose Guest Information to law enforcement agencies, ..."

They are saying right there that they may disclose such information. Whether they are breaking state law is a matter for the courts to decide. Apparently the Supreme Court already decided such a matter. I disagree with that decision, if such information should be kept private then it should be illegal for a hotel to require such data. They should only require the information to charge for the room or accept cash with little or no information. Why does the hotel require such information in the first place?

But all this does is create yet another bump in the road for law enforcement to do one of the easiest parts of their job, asking a third-party for information.

"So my plain reading of their terms would suggest that data should only be shared "during the discovery process in litigation [or] pursuant to a court order""

Uh? "We may disclose Guest Information to law enforcement agencies, or may be required to disclose it during the discovery process in litigation ..."

A court is going to say these are two different sentences talking about two different things. One where they voluntarily may do it whenever they want, and one where they may be required to do it anyway by court order.

Washington does not have any such statute protecting consumers from data sharing. The exact laws the AG is trying to sue for are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16072592 The actual laws he's citing do not seem appropriate for this case. One of them being refusal of service based on race, another law specifically does not apply to things that apply to all customers (and their terms specifically opt all consumers into information sharing), and the final is unfair commercial practices which is intended for things like selling a used vehicle as a new one.

Again, if there were laws against companies selling or sharing information then I think this would be a major issue and my stance would also change 180 degrees. I also very much wish those laws existed, but they do not. And pretending they do only masks our complete lack of consumer privacy protections in the US.

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