FBI: If you knew what your phone company tells us, you'd probably sue

You know you might not be serving the public interest if... "The stigma of working with the FBI might cause customers to ... file civil actions to further prevent the disclosure of information"

This why the recent iPhone location data "scare" doesn't make sense to me. The wireless carriers must have MUCH more extensive location data on a much larger user base. I understand the growing concern over privacy issues as more companies begin aggregating user data etc, and I'm glad that people are (hopefully) becoming more aware of this issue, but shouldn't we react a bit more proportionately to corporate violations of user privacy?

This is why you should use Skype. The only phone service not based in the US... oh, wait a second.

Seriously, though, I wonder if the FBI can eavesdrop on a Skype call. It seems like it would be damn near impossible because it is peer to peer and encrypted.

Honestly at this point, most people should expect this sort of behavior from any type of telecom company. Yeah, it sucks but it's the name of the game. Take into consideration that the gov owns the air space/spectrum these companies use, and you'll understand why they're so compliant with releasing information. The only way this will change is if there's a privatization of air space which at this point is seemingly impossible.

Are you kidding? While we're a litigation-happy society, we are also entirely content with letting government and business trample all over us without raising an eyebrow, much less a finger.

We let companies get away with destroying the economy through sloppy and greedy irresponsible behavior and then we cover their asses by bailing them out. Because the committees that determine their bailing out are filled with former/current executives of the same companies they're bailing out (Goldman Sachs, for example).

We let companies stick dangerous and unproven chemicals in our food, soda, animals with little evidence that it's safe beforehand and little oversight afterhand, because the various government agencies (FDA, for example) are staffed primarily with executives of the companies that are trying to ram these things through (aspartame, roundup-ready seeds, rbgh in milk, etc).

We have food that is mass produced in conditions that are horrifying to anyone who, even if they love meat like I do, don't like to see living creatures abused and tortured in the process and that are filthy and commonly spread disease (that we see reports of all the time on the news when there are outbreaks and recalls), because the FDA and other agencies are - again - staffed with current/former executives of the biggest food manufacturers and processors in the world.

Hell, we even have government officials shutting down public run juvenile rehabilitation centers so that private ones can take their places and then those private companies paying judges directly to incentive's them to send juveniles to jail. I forget where this was (the northeast is what I remember), but a couple years ago it was huge news and it actually happened. The judge in question (and there may have been more than one) received millions of dollars in payola from the private prison industry system that built the juvenile detention centers. As a result, the judge just kept sending kids there. First time offenders. Kids who did very little to deserve it (get in a fight at school, use foul language, skip school) would get about two minutes of face time with the judge before he sentenced them to the facility. And once at the facility, they would keep kids indefinitely, until they said it was time to go. So a two week sentence could turn into a year. (Oh, found the story: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/02/13/us-crime-usa-judge... -- "Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.")

So if we know all of these things and we don't care (I'm sipping on a diet coke and eating a processed microwave burrito right now, for example), why should I expect that people are going to give much more concern to their privacy or the liberties of anyone else around them? Unless they think you're taking jesus away from them, cheap gasoline away from them, or their $5 latte away from them, or their favorite television show away from them . . . they don't fucking care.

Not only don't they care, but a big percentage will always play the role of apologist. For anything. FBI pouring through your personal information, using your geolocation data. Whatever it is, the complaining voices are always few and the people taking action even fewer.

Question: if you're embarrassed about the idea of the FBI knowing something about you, then why are you cool with the idea of the phone company knowing it?

I wonder how much of this applies to Facebook.

Again, this is all ancient news. We've known for years now that the FBI has had eavesdropping ability not just on phones but on the Internet. We've had whistle blowers talk about installing large routers to duplicate and divert Internet traffic on huge top-tier ISP levels.

Time and time again, no one cares or at least cares enough to do anything.