Telecoms say they have a First Amendment right to sell private data
vice.com
vice.com
Good to see Maine has a law protecting privacy. I agree with other commenters that this kind of law should be broad-spectrum, affecting all businesses from telcos to lemonade stands.
My ISP is a municipal fiber provider with strong and proud Net Neutrality. Obviously NN isn't a privacy issue, but it's unlikely to pair with trying to sell personal data (of our own neighbors!) for cash.
In addition to consumer protection laws, strongly consider supporting local municipal FTTH. Compared to Comcast, I pay less money for unmetered symmetric gigabit, it's run by ordinary people (not comic book villains), and the money stays here in town. All it takes is determined civic engagement.
(And that includes voting out the people who support these attacks against people.)
Meanwhile, collect signatures for a small, non-threatening initiative like whether the city should explore the possibility of creating FTTH. Be involved in that process. Be helpful, positive, and patient. Contact other cities that have done this and get advice from them. Get the study/plan published. If the city govt is against it, vote them out and continue. Otherwise, encourage local govt to promote the plan. Then have a ballot question on whether to build the municipal fiber ISP.
Reasons to build a municipal fiber ISP:
* lower cost Internet and money stays here
* superior service
* net neutrality and consumer protection
* jobs, jobs, jobs
* increased property valuesIf you're trying to get Loudoun County to provide municipal fiber, that'd be a much bigger project/investment than a smaller municipality. Obviously some independent cities in Virginia are smaller (especially Falls Church), but most folks live in relatively large counties.
[0] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
For Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/ccpa
It's a little tedious since you have to do it with each company, but so far I've found that it largely works.
You can also do it for equifax, experian, and transunion (though when I tried equifax it was unsurprisingly broken).
You can either request the data they have on you, ask for it to be deleted (the parts they don't require for operation), or opt-out of resale.
This website [0] has a bunch of links to the CCPA pages for different companies. The better companies have enabled this ability for all users, but generally the companies you'd rather delete from have only enabled it for California.
what, precisely, are the implications of this?
This has already happened with GDPR... remember the credit unions are private companies, not government outfits.
They remove any other data about you that they collect and would otherwise 'anonymize' and sell. You can ask them to give you the data first before asking them to delete it if you're interested in what it specifically is.
That's what they'll argue anyway. They'll use different words, but whatever words they use will carry that message.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev
AT&T put hundreds of thousands of subscriber emails on the web with no password or firewall or meaningful authentication of any kind. (They were server-sent autocompleted values in the username field of a login form that had a sequential integer URL argument.) He and a conspirator downloaded them all and sent them to the media to run stories about AT&T’s negligence (instead of, say, selling or publishing the list, or emailing them malware, et c).
He did a few years in federal, mostly in solitary.
I witnessed the terrible effects it had on his health and psyche. He was never the same person again after he got out. Solitary confinement is torture.
sophocles is right. There are two sets of laws in America, and the bigger one applies to you and not them. If you don’t show sufficient respect for their authority and the more restrictive set of rules they apply to your lower-status group, they will stretch their own rules to the point where you will be railroaded and subsequently tortured.
> It's pretty clear the crime here was unauthorized access to the server, not the sending of the information on to the media.
I think this is a good place as any to reassert that the CFAA is irrepairable and irredeemable at this point and MUST be scrapped with no replacement.
How about we stop justifying hurting people because of their (in this case retroactive) violations of social/political norms and worry more about if our society itself is tolerable and is, in fact, sometimes perfectly deserving of extreme reactions.
But really you're not confused at all, you're just trying to bait me into a tedious semantic argument in which you'll suddenly forget how English works and what words even mean, and I'm not wasting my time with that.
If the "they" are the people supporting the punishment and torture of someone for reporting on corporate incompetence, and the manner of punishment is extremism, then your rationale leads to the extremism you want to punish. By this rationale, society deserves the extremism it gives rise to through its treatment of individuals who were not extremist before the treatment.
It's a terrible rationale. The extremist ideology, itself, is unjustifiable regardless of the means by which it's acquired.
The guy had been baiting people to clock him in the face for his anti-social behavior on the internet since forever. I don't think it was what he did to AT&T that got him sent up, he'd been on the feds' radar since at least the Sarah Palin email hack.
Perfect example of a guy just a little bit too far outside of the circle to get away with ignoring the inner party’s mandates.
They cooked up some insider trading to throw him in federal, too. He’s out now, I understand.
There are teenagers who were dating someone with a slightly too large age gap who spent far more time in prison than Epstein did.
Hard to say with any certainty, but there is the case of the founder of a certain Wikileaks-type organization currently playing out that you might want to look at...
Just one mouthed, audible word to confirm the entity can qualify for speech. Then we can consider "free speech" for that entity.
I can only dream this would hold up even as I know there are likely dozens of loopholes to render it irrelevant. Not to mention specific exceptions and allowances already in law.
The founders wanted the ability to print what they wanted and, just as importantly, not be forced by the government to print things they didn't want to.
Can it? Then why couldn't any other company similarly fall back on to the rights of their employees. e.g. whoever is compiling the data being sold in the telecom case.
Most random employees have no usefully unrestricted free speech when their contract often deliberately punishes them if they say the wrong word. Those people working for companies shut up about their work unless they are willing to go whistleblower / they reveal a workplace safety issue / have legal advice etc.
Ultimately, I think you will find that a great deal of law (and, much more broadly, ethics) comes down to 'I know it when I see it' (or, perhaps, 'we (the people) agree that we know it when we see it'.) This can be a difficult thing for people with a somewhat rigidly rational approach to life to accept.
Pornography in law is famous because it is one of the few 'I know it when I see it' situations. While certainly the law lacks the rigor we enjoy in technical fields, it is a rare circumstance where that is the legal basis of an opinion.
While the law, for obvious reasons, rarely uses 'I know it when I see it' justifications, I suspect that that is what most ethical principles ultimately depend on, and to the extent that the law tries to be ethical, the same goes for it.
Privacy isn't dead its just being sold as a commodity now. Without realistic permission and protection.
I'd go even further: the ISPs only have this data as a result of business dealing and such data is not expected to be shared. Sharing of my history is not necessary for providing me with internet. You want to allow accounting firms to share your financial records as well?
They are only doing it because there's profit. Not because its a necessary aspect for providing internet access. Sharing your accounting data is similar. Another example: what if you go for counselling with psychologist etc? Is that protected?
Of course, Maine does not have the power to institute HIPAA like regulations for internet data and so do this instead. Nonetheless, I think the telecoms broadly have a point here.
Demand is far too overstating it. And I'm not proposing or demanding it become law. There's a bunch of side-effects we might not like.
But let's go with it anyway:
Freedom of speech is different from freedom of the press. But both are linked because the amendment was written to allow for people to record their grievances to government via a free press. This is why free press was linked - people wanted their speech recorded in print and it was seen that government might legislate this out of existence or otherwise restrict it.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Notice that people can obviously operate a press without congress outlawing it.
Care to show me where a corporation gets free speech from? Not from that amendment. It comes from law around granting corporations the status of "legal person". This was necessary to allow a group of people to operate a business and have the business be liable, make contracts etc instead of the group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person
If you want to imply corporations have freedom of the press and therefore freedom of speech thats the only angle you have if you reject "legal person". Freedom of press is the ability to print. My fictional judge would accept that printed page as "from the corporate entity". But its still not speech: That judge would then ask the corporate entity to speak it.
As for a corporation actually being able to speak or print. The entity can own a printer. So it can "speak" via the press. But it can't actually talk without a proxy. No actual mouth nor was it born with one nor would it could presumably be seen to even possibly have been born with one. This covers the case where some clever lawyer might bring up exceptions for birth deformity as a reason for granting something without speech actual free speech.
But in reality its all moot: "legal person" is already a thing. And it overrides all of this. Until it doesn't I guess but that is unlikely.
The more astute would just say that any of these conditions would have to be put into law and the amendment prevents that. So, its still moot. Unless you determine that legal entities aren't actually people but only narrowly defined as people for particular reasons.
Corporations were granted free speech in a couple famous supreme court cases (NYT v. Sullivan, NYT vs. U.S.) and is not tied to the more recent non-human 'person' law.
The relevant question in my mind is how to protect Wikipedia and the New York Times and The Red Cross and ... from censorship by the government. There are very many organizations which speak in ways that the government would prefer they wouldn't- not all of them are traditional press, but many are.
Your proposal would allow the government to censor them all as they no longer have that protected right.
The ISPs aren't acting as a press, unless they wish to assert that their primary objective is to publish IPs and other metadata. That is fine as well but they should then lose protection as a simple carrier of data. They would also incur liability of what is published. I'm fair sure they wouldn't want that. They would scream "we're not a press we're a carrier!" to escape that liability.
This is similar to the postal service asserting that they are a press and then selling delivery details or even opening your letters and sharing their content. So, what business are they in? Publisher or carrier? I think it matters.
[1] The weaker fallback of a corporation using its employee's freedom of speech asserts that those employees are fully protected from the corporation. I doubt that is ever true. So in a real way the employees don't have free rein over their opinions and speech. Restricted speakers. I'd therefore not be relying on that. I'd want wikipedia etc protected under freedom of press instead.
Your piano, for example, can't employ me.
I can still sue someone who never speaks.
I agree. The law should apply to everyone, not just ISPs.
Free speech states that a state isn't going to prosecute you directly for whatever you may say. But that doesn't mean you are free from the consequences of what you're saying.
Privacy protection simply states that any legal person who feels that your actions violated the consent they gave, is free to sue you via the legal system for compensation for damages incurred. Which has little if anything to do with free speech.
If a telco uses the "free speech" argument, they essentially argue "we're a media company and we are accountable for what we publish".
If we're discussing media companies, it's interesting to note that these pull the "freedom of press" card to defend divulging person or confidential information in news outlets.
At this point, the entire discussion becomes rather silly semantics.
Interestingly, many EU countries also have "secrecy of correspondence" enshrined as a fundamental principle into their constitutions. The U.S. does not:
If you are punished by the government for what you say, are you not being prosecuted by the government for what you say? If we say that all one needs to do to be punished for saying the wrong thing is to enter into an agreement with another person, what is to stop Facebook from adding something to its EULA saying by using the services you are agreeing to not say anything out of line with what Facebook wishes?
It seems like the end result of this rationale is that we allow the government to enforce private agreements that compromise speech. Effectively meaning you can sign away your First Amendment rights.
The whole "doesn't mean you are free from the consequences of what you're saying" is meant in respect to how other people are treating you, not how the government is treating you (regardless if it is on behalf of another person).
The 1st begins with "Congress shall make no law.."
The 4th states "..shall not be violated"
This is important because the 1st restricts what the government can do, while the 4th restricts what anyone can do. In other words, Congress need not pass a law restricting the collecting and sale of private information because that activity is already banned by the 4th. This is a job for the courts.
No individual or company has to necessarily "respect" your first amendment right to free speech, as that is something that can only be violated by the government or a government affiliated entity for which these protections also apply.
A group of gun's rights advocates marching in Virginia recently argued that not being allowed to brandish assault weapons at the capitol was violation of their "symbolic" speech.[0]
I'm just waiting for the point where someone tries to make the defense in court that shooting another person in the head was an exercise of their freedom of speech.
[0]https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/01/gun-groups-want-firearms-b...
Do the big telco's remove the history of their own execs when selling it?
What would it cost for someone to buy the browsing histories of the execs at these companies ... or that of politicians and their staffs.
I hire those assholes to transport my bits, unmodified except for TTL, from my endpoint to a peer, no more, no less. Since they have a de facto monopoly I don’t even have the ability to choose an alternative. This exploitative crap must be stopped.
Of course my version is that they're all common carriers and have to comply with some norms, but allowing platforms to do this but not telcos is potentially silly
I could be wrong. I guess my point is, this is a double-edged sword, like most freedoms.
You never know, on a misunderstanding it might actually work!https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/isps-sue-maine-c...
California Constitution
ARTICLE I DECLARATION OF RIGHTS
SECTION 1.
All people are by nature free and independent
and have inalienable rights. Among these are
enjoying and defending life and liberty,
acquiring, possessing, and protecting property,
and pursuing and obtaining safety, happiness,
and privacy.on edit: obviously not because I'm not in the U.S but if I were?
Clearly, the First Amendment right to free speech isn't absolute and unrestricted.
> There isn't a similar existence of privacy rights.
upthread?!
I'd heard they gathered a large amount of data, but more to do with the trend of just hoovering up every bit possible and store it in their data lakes.
My understanding at the time is they had no idea what to do with it.
Some of these initiatives could be rooted in little more than some manager wanting to stamp `mined data lake using machine learning and AI to generate $(x) in $(m)`. It doesn't have to actually mean anything.
That said, maybe they've discovered a route to more revenue, hence the push.
edit: Should clarify this was in Canada when the linked article is about the US.
edit: I'd like to add a disclaimer that my comments are as good as hearsay. I just wanted to add them for context.
I have to use crapcast (though goes down each night) as att, despite their ads, will only provision me 768kb DSL though I’m less than a mile from the CO/DSLAMS (and the PAIX for that matter)
I assume elsewhere the two companies have a deal where comcast is slow and att is faster. Of course the competition authorities and fcc are utterly supine.
Palo Alto used to run its own infrastructure but over the years stupid privatization has gradually shed phone, TV, garbage collection, parking enforcement and such for inferior, more expensive private services. I expect power and water to fall next.
24 million Americans don't have any options that the FCC considers as fixed broadband service (25/3mbps)
I imagine if historically cable tv and phone were transmitted by the same technology or company, there would only be one company allowed access. Since these were historically separate, they are granted access to the poles. Technically this is not a monopoly given that there are two different providers. It is monopolistic in my view. I have yet to live in an area that has more than two companies with pole access.
As a counter example that shows they are still not fully "people": a corporation cannot adopt a child or get married.
We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.
I guess I could rent instead, except that would require a contract as well. I get the impression you haven't really thought this through.
That's why we allow them to be a legal person. So Comcast can sign a contract to purchase a new toner cartridge, rather than requiring a signature from each owner of each of their 4.5 billion shares outstanding.
This is an especially pernicious case of the normal Stockholm Syndrome we see whenever the special status of corporations is challenged. No firm is 100% robots yet. If we withdraw our consent, they have to raise wages and improve working conditions until we relent.
This is especially true for freelancers, who don't have a single employer and are instead usually paid for deliverables as specified in a contract. Being able to quit anytime doesn't help if you've already spent weeks or months working on a project and never get paid because the company decides on a whim that they don't need your deliverable anymore.
Corporate “personhood” goes back even further, to at least 1819 with the Dartmouth v Woodward decision.
Citizens United has been surrounded by ignorance, promoted by newspapers who, incidentally, had their effectiveness and power reduced since they were no longer the only “protected” gatekeepers for picking political candidates.
Why should the New York Times editorial board get to express their opinions through millions of printed papers distributed through an expensive and vast logistics network, or via a website maintained by hired employees with a budget of millions per year?
Why shouldn’t Bob’s Hardware Inc., be able to also spend money, in exactly the same way as the New York Times to spread the message of their preferred political candidates that would be helpful for their business? How is Bob’s Hardware any less entitled to being able to express their opinions or present their facts than the N.Y. Times? Should the EFF be able to spend money at the same levels as what the New York Times spends to cut down trees and print some words on it and then send those words to readers all over the world? Media organizations can spend limitless amounts on getting their message out — Bob’s Hardware ought to have the same rights.
The First Amendment doesn’t protect newspapers as a special class — it protects everyone. The “press” is referring to the actual machine used to print things, not specifically to a news gathering organization. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/02/dont-be...