pktgen

Quite simply, if you fail to opt out, you will have almost no chance at all of successfully fighting the arbitration agreement. Period. The Supreme Court precedent leaves little room for dispute on this point. So yes, everyone should follow the instructions and opt out.

Unfortunately, the GOP Supreme Court has made these arbitration agreements nearly bulletproof. What you've written makes a lot of sense and is how it should be, but judges now have very little leeway in not enforcing arbitration agreements. See AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-893.pdf) and Amex v. Italian Colors (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-133_19m1.pdf). (Concepcion in particular originated from a California Supreme Court ruling that these agreements were unconscionable and unenforceable in certain situations.)

Very enforceable, thanks to the GOP-stacked Supreme Court. See AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-893.pdf) and Amex v. Italian Colors (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-133_19m1.pdf).

Dropbox's ToS for their file storage service also has an arbitration clause: https://www.dropbox.com/privacy#terms.

> We Both Agree To Arbitrate. You and Dropbox agree to resolve any claims relating to these Terms or the Services through final and binding arbitration by a single arbitrator, except as set forth under Exceptions to Agreement to Arbitrate below. This includes disputes arising out of or relating to interpretation or application of this "Mandatory Arbitration Provisions" section, including its enforceability, revocability, or validity.

> Is this exact thing what's being considered in some of the more recent Supreme Court cases? https://www.npr.org/2017/10/06/555862822/no-class-action-sup.... -- but that's still being sussed out.

(Not a lawyer.) It's the same issue, but a different context. The issue currently before the Supreme Court is whether the National Labor Relations Act, which provides workers the right to unionize and engage in concerted activity, prohibits class-action waivers. The (eventual) outcome of that case will not be relevant to the Dropbox agreement at issue here, because the Dropbox agreement is not an employment contract.

> Company management may accept with varying levels of ease employees voluntarily sharing salary info with each other.

May accept? No, in the US, they have to accept it (unless the employees are supervisors or working for one of the few exempt industries such as railroads or airlines; even then, other laws may apply). See https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/employee-rights.

The NLRB already filed a complaint against Tesla recently: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/CPT.3....

> The problem with CFPB is that it sought to carve out its own view of what is right and proper for consumers of financial services without regard to the intent of Congress in having enacted the existing arbitration laws.

Dodd-Frank specifically required the CFPB to conduct a study on arbitration in financial agreements, and provided the CFPB authority to impose rules depending on the findings of that study. (12 U.S.C. § 5518, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/12/5518)

> Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, and Kroger, the second biggest, said they were comfortable continuing to send Equifax their payroll data.

Kroger has a large union workforce. It will be interesting to see if their unions make this an issue and force the data handover to stop.

> For things like house, car, and life savings, I'm perfectly glad to go somewhere with physical ID. Heck, I'd love to see police stations offering this as a municipal service. Lying via internet form is pretty easy. Walking into a building with 100 cops bearing fake ID is a whole different level.

This is a great idea. Not only can the police verify that a given photo ID matches the person in front of them, they can also verify that the ID is valid and unaltered by verifying that the details on the ID match the details in the DMV's database, eliminating fake IDs from being an issue. This wouldn't be 100% perfect -- maybe a really determined ID thief could get the DMV to issue them an ID in someone else's name -- but it would dramatically increase the risk and makes ID theft much harder to scale.

A federal effort to standardize an identity verification service across federal and local offices nationwide would be helpful. The service should be available to any entity (not only banks or financial entities) who wishes to verify the identity of a counterparty. The process and fee should be standardized nationwide, with the fee being break-even and paid by the entity requesting the verification.

Post offices are a good candidate to offer such a service, but would need some work to set up (unlike police agencies, I presume post offices don't have access to DMV databases).

While UPS's motivation is obvious, their argument is valid. There is no good reason for FedEx Express drivers to not be covered by the NLRA.

FedEx Ground "contractors" are actually employees, just misclassified.

> You can, if you do it right, walk off your job and refuse to come back, and if you're disciplined for doing so, sue your employer.

An employee's recourse for illegal retaliation is even easier than you say. You file a charge with the NLRB (which you don't need a lawyer for) and let the federal government investigate and litigate.

> Here's a thing that a lot of people on Hacker News don't know --- and I think this is a genuine case of something that the ownership class in the American economy doesn't want you to know: [snipped remaining]

I couldn't agree more. Thank you for this post and your constant efforts to inform workers of their federally-protected rights under the NLRA.

If that was the case, it would be well-known because banks would not be able to get Equifax credit reports on consumers.

> Well, unless you belong to the minority of people on this forum with no assets in the stock market whatsoever (either directly or indirectly via a bank account, pension fund, etc), you are part of the system that profits off corporate activity. The only exception is if you traced your holdings in such companies (Wells Fargo is the example given here) and where they are getting used to within reasonable limits (some activity may not be disclosed to you as a member of the public for instance), and divested from all of them. A priori, I would find such a situation highly unlikely.

As appealing as it is to just use Vanguard index funds for my retirement account and be done with it, I have so far resisted the urge to do that for this reason. If I don't want a company to exist, I don't want to own that company, even if it only makes up 0.05% of my money. I think cheap, broad, cap-weighted index funds are the best way to invest in stocks, but I want the ability to exclude stocks of companies I find unethical.

There's an opportunity for a roboadvisor to replace all index ETFs with directly-replicated indexes. Vanguard TSM has around 3500 stocks and the international index also has thousands. I'm sure it was impractical and not cost-effective a few decades ago to buy thousands of stocks in fractional units for each customer account, but I think the large roboadvisors could pull it off today: they have scale, automation, and the ability to aggregate and batch all customer trades daily (minimizing trading costs). Wealthfront's direct indexing is a good start, but it's only for US large-cap stocks, and the lack of support for fractional shares means a 6-figure minimum account balance and potentially meaningful tracking error.

Agreed. In addition to judicial decisions, Obama's NLRB has issued several common-sense and worked-friendly decisions over the past several years. The Republican member(s), which were a minority but soon will be the majority, always dissent, using tortured "logic" to justify a position that is inevitably biased towards the employer. When NLRB decisions voted upon party lines are reviewed in court, they have a higher chance of being upheld by Democrat-appointed judges.

The Republican members are there to represent management.

Yes, according to https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitra...:

> One of the players behind the scenes, The Times found, was John G. Roberts Jr., who as a private lawyer representing Discover Bank unsuccessfully petitioned the Supreme Court to hear a case involving class-action bans. By the time the Supreme Court handed down its favorable decisions, he was the chief justice.

Besides the class action waiver which so blatantly violates the NLRA, an NLRB administrative law judge recently ruled that Uber's arbitration agreement is defective in another way: it is likely to be interpreted as prohibiting employees from filing NLRB charges. The ALJ decision is at https://apps.nlrb.gov/link/document.aspx/09031d458249405c.

I fear that you're right. It seems so blatantly obvious that employees collectively litigating employment-related claims is a "concerted activity for mutual aid or protection," and thus class action waivers do violate the NLRA. (So why is this even a dispute? Because conservatives.)

It only takes a few minutes to file a NLRB charge. The charge form only requires a brief summary of the allegations (a few sentences, at most) and specifically tells you not to include any evidence (you provide that later, during or after meeting with a Board agent).

The article suggests that the United Auto Workers union is involved:

> It also asks Tesla to refrain from using anti-union rhetoric or action. In April, the United Auto Workers and three Tesla employees filed separate charges with the National Labor Relations Board claiming the company had coerced employees trying to aid the unionization effort into silence.

> More likely, employees will unionize, and come to some agreement with management, or, they will fail to, and anyone attempting to unionize will be fired. (Illegally, but in at-will states, employees have almost zero recourse for that kind of termination.)

Actually, private-sector employees have recourse for that in all states under the federal National Labor Relations Act -- they can file a charge with the NLRB. The NLRB staff are very helpful and understand that most people are not lawyers, so they will even help you draft the charge form and walk you through the process.

The parent poster is probably referring to the Naked Capitalism series, not FT. That series is now up to 9 parts:

Part 1: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 2: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 3: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 4: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 5: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 6: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 7: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 8: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/02/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 9: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/03/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Yep, write random data to the entire drive before doing the secure erase. That way, even if the secure erase implementation is completely broken, at least the remaining data should be limited to the spare area of the drive.

Tallman is on the appellate level of the FISA court [1], which is why his name doesn't appear on that Wikipedia page. Pregerson isn't on the FISA court at any level.

[1] http://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/fiscr_membership

I don't know about that - is ~10 years in federal prison worth a few million dollars (after splitting it between Hansmeier and other co-conspirators)? Also, they're not going to get to keep the money.

As lawyers, I'm betting they could make the same amount of money in the same timeframe practicing legitimately (or, knowing how these idiots operate, "semi-legitimately"), but without the federal prison time.

The judge in the middle is Judge Pregerson.

Not to mention their business model appears unsustainable to begin with:

Part 1: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 2: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 3: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 4: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 5: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 6: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/can-uber-ever-deliver...

Part 7: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/can-uber-ever-deliver...

And this is why making that yearly payment for your service actually makes me happy. :)

That's a good point.

The best thing to do is avoid home networking equipment entirely. The Ubiquiti EdgeRouter products are cheap and good, as is building your own router and sticking Linux/*BSD/derivative distros on it.