11 ms·

Telecoms say they have a First Amendment right to sell private data

278 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

allovernow 7y ago
That sounds like a pretty desperate argument. What proportion of their revenue are they making from selling this data?
- brenden2 7y ago
  Presumably it's at least enough to keep the legal team gainfully employed.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  I previously worked under the umbrella of a major Canadian telecom (though in their media arm—radio, publishing, television). 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.
  - kitteh 7y ago
    Was this Rogers New Media? Just curious because my recollection is that they owned the network infrastructure for the cable internet side and were the first folks in Canada to go big on deep packet inspection boxes (aka Cisco pcube, which was from an acquisition of an Israeli compamy) to deal with "undesirable" traffic but also mining customer data.
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      I didn't work on that side of the company so I can't comment with accuracy (the entire entity was around 25,000 people at the time). Only what I've heard along the way. I know they wanted to leverage the data, but I didn't gather they had necessarily developed much use at the time. They were definitely interested in collecting data, however. edit: I'd like to add a disclaimer that my comments are as good as hearsay. I just wanted to add them for context.
12xo 7y ago
How perverted. They claim that the entity has a right to free speech? And worse, that somehow that entitles them to do as they please? Is Alan Dershowitz behind this?
auiya 7y ago
The US needs GDPR-equivalent laws ASAP.
- xxpor 7y ago
  If this argument succeeds, even GDPR wouldn't save us since they're making a constitutional argument, not an argument based on the US code.
  - zahma 7y ago
    Certainly a court challenge would pit the 1st Amendment rights of the consumer against that of a corporation. Something along the lines of citizens have the right of freedom of expression that is not accumulated and traded. In a sane world, a corporation would not trump the rights of a private citizen: the purveyor of goods and services meant to improve the lives of citizens. Right..? right?! But after Citizens United, who could really be sure that the average citizen is any more important than a corporation's personhood.
comis 7y ago
> “Maine's decision to impose unique burdens on ISPs' speech—while ignoring the online and offline businesses that have and use the very same information and for the same and similar purposes as ISPs—represents discrimination between similarly situated speakers that is impermissible under the First Amendment,” the lawsuit claimed. I agree. The law should apply to everyone, not just ISPs.
- turc1656 7y ago
  Haha yep. It's lovely when the filer of the lawsuit raises a great point on how to throw out their case and further citizen protection, isn't it?
TallGuyShort 7y ago
I would be fine with that argument if they could get media companies on board with fair use and more limited copyright again. At least that would be consistent logic, but that won't happen.
ipython 7y ago
Sounds like I have an equal first amendment right to publicly expose the personal cell phone numbers and home addresses of every lawyer, corporate executive, and lobbyist who think this is a good idea.
- sophacles 7y ago
  No you don't. Those folks are a different class of people than you, a better class, a class that deserves privacy - us peons aren't important enough to have to worry about that stuff. That's what they'll argue anyway. They'll use different words, but whatever words they use will carry that message.
  - gruez 7y ago
    Defeatist attitude aside, what would happen if we crowd funded a wikileaks-type organization that operates "as an ISP" and doxxed politicians/lobbyists/lawyers/isp executives?
    - sneak 7y ago
      You’d go to jail like weev did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev 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.
      - 7y ago
rs23296008n1 7y ago
Sure. Just get the corporate entity to say a single word. No representatives. No notes. No proxies. No robots. No automated voices. The actual corporate legal entity. Not even the CEO. No clever stand-ins with same name. 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.
- muro 7y ago
  A mute person has the right too :)
  - rahuldottech 7y ago
    A mute person can write. Or sign. A corporate entity doesn't communicate in any way. Because... It obviously cannot.
    - dnautics 7y ago
      Freedom of speech exists so that entities are presumed to be able to say things without interference from the government. An absolutist stance such as yours results in things like governments disincorporating newspapers that publish politically unfavorable content simply because the newspaper is s corporation and it can't itself physically speak (or write something, or publish something) without a human intermediary.
- mLuby 7y ago
  I like where your head's at, but guardians speak on behalf of minors, lawyers speak on behalf of clients, and representatives speak on behalf of their electorate (in theory), so executives speaking on behalf of groups of employees isn't much different.
  - simiones 7y ago
    On behalf of groups of investors, perhaps, not employees.
kitteh 7y ago
When I worked at a large telco/broadband provider in the 90s and onward such concepts of selling this data was forbidden and you'd get funny looks for suggesting it. Our leadership chain - comprised of a mixture of long tenured employees with mostly engineering backgrounds supported not wanting to sell this data as well. It wasn't until the mid 2000s when our leadership got swapped out with younger executives who'd do 2 year rotations across the company and were looking to do a fast big bang to wow others that would go down this road. It wasn't just selling data this new gang wanted, but DNS redirection (think for nxdomains), and ad insertion thru TCP seassion hijacking platforms. There were a number of startups who were happy to give us free gear to sniff & manipulate customer traffic and we'd get a cut of the ad money.
kabdib 7y ago
Wasn't Apple using the same argument when they refused to make custom iOS firmware with backdoors for the FBI a few years ago? I could be wrong. I guess my point is, this is a double-edged sword, like most freedoms.
fossuser 7y ago
For those that are unaware, if you live in California the recently passed CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) gives you a lot of new power to force companies to delete your data and let you opt-out of them selling it. For Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/ccpa 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. [0] https://caprivacy.github.io/caprivacy/ https://caprivacy.github.io/caprivacy/
- ouid 7y ago
  >You can also do it for equifax, experian, and transunion. what, precisely, are the implications of this?
  - fossuser 7y ago
    They don't remove data related to your FICO score that they can legally keep for that purpose. 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.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
    Reset your credit completely... in the eyes of the corporations, you don't exist.
    - willis936 7y ago
      I simply do not believe that one piece of legislation could accomplish this. This is how money makes money. It will not stop for the law.
Panino 7y ago
The big telcos have always been horrible and they will never change. I used to work for a small provider in that industry and always hated USWest because of that experience. They will never change as long as they exist, whatever name they go by. 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.)
- DailyHN 7y ago
  I would love to see a playbook on making that happen.
  - Panino 7y ago
    If you're asking how to create a municipal fiber ISP, take inspiration and guidance from existing success stories. It'll vary depending on the state and culture and require multiple steps. If telecoms have already bribed the state govt to ban municipal Internet, collect signatures for a ballot question on whether to allow municipalities to decide for themselves. Next, start a local campaign to promote municipal FTTH. There, keep your messaging simple, consistent, and on-point (see below). 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 values
ptah 7y ago
watering down freedom of speech because why not
- takk309 7y ago
  As soon as companies and businesses were considered "people" and got the same rights, it all became a farce.
  - strictnein 7y ago
    Corporate personhood is a centuries old idea. It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. As a counter example that shows they are still not fully "people": a corporation cannot adopt a child or get married.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.
      - strictnein 7y ago
        The entire financial system would disappear.
        jessaustin 7y ago
        Wouldn't most of that be handled by corporations making agreements among themselves? I don't think "the entire financial system" is really based on hooking individual people on unsustainable credit.
        Ajedi32 7y ago
        So if I want to buy a house, but don't have enough to cover 100% of the cost in a single down payment I'm just SOL? 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.
ghastmaster 7y ago
If municipalities stop giving them local monopolies they can have rights again. Until then, they should be beholden to strict rules.
- gumby 7y ago
  What monopoly? Here in Palo Alto I have full consumer “choice”: comcast or att. 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.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    You're lucky that you have that many options. You don't have to go too far into rural areas to find places where there isn't any coax on the poles. 24 million Americans don't have any options that the FCC considers as fixed broadband service (25/3mbps)
    - ghastmaster 7y ago
      I lived in one of those areas in the 90s. We had dial-up. I was incredibly happy when we moved to the city and were able to get broadband. I was shocked when I found out a friend who lives in my city today was still operating with broadband. He complained about his wife having trouble using voip while watching netflix, so I suggested he upgrade his router or move it. When I went over to install the new router I found a broadband modem...! His street is serviced by the same companies as mine. He is in an arguably affluent neighborhood. He had to switch companies to get to 50mbit+.
  - ghastmaster 7y ago
    In most places the energy company owns the poles and the municipality grants them the right to be the sole energy provider. The access to the pole is limited to the cable company and the phone company(around here spectrum[cable] and cincinnati bell[phone]). The other option is satellite. Municipalities require payments for each lot that the company services whether or not they have a paying customer. These companies are given exclusive rights to access the poles.(Source=widowed spouse of TCI VP) 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.
CaptArmchair 7y ago
That's not how "free speech" works. That right isn't violated by privacy protection laws. 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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence
- bluGill 7y ago
  The US has the ninth amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_... which is the out for anything the founders didn't think of. (There is a massive amount of controversy around this, Wikipedia just scratches the surface)
- SkyBelow 7y ago
  >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. 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).
gumby 7y ago
Great: furniture movers should also have the free speech right to talk about my address, describe all my possessions, etc. 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.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  Furniture movers do have that free speech right. It's completely kosher for them to chat with some friends in a bar about how weird your possessions are or how hard it was to get to your address. Maybe ISPs should have special restrictions the same way medical providers do, but there's no general principle that people who discover private things about you aren't allowed to talk about it.
  - gumby 7y ago
    But I suspect people would be perturbed if the moving companies sold that information.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      Of course, and many people are perturbed that telecom companies sell their information. However, perturbed != illegal.
clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I think it's funny how high and mighty so many are on this site but if you look to your left and right YOU are the ones building this dystopia.
mfer 7y ago
I wonder... 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.
awinter-py 7y ago
I mean every platform is monetizing data. If the telcos are arguing 'google and facebook are the same as us, we should have the same business models' I kind of agree 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
34679 7y ago
There's a pretty big difference between the qualifiers used in the 1st and 4th Amendments. 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.
- turc1656 7y ago
  I don't believe that's accurate. I've heard first hand from lawyers that the bill of rights guarantees protections from government action, not other citizens or entities like corporations. That's why, for example, we have to have laws that make it illegal for people to break into your home and steal stuff. Otherwise, we could just apply the 4th amendment. 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.
bryanrasmussen 7y ago
Do I have a first amendment right to sell pirated Disney cartoons? on edit: obviously not because I'm not in the U.S but if I were?
- kube-system 7y ago
  US courts recognize many exceptions to the first amendment. IP rights fall into that category.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Which rather demolishes the telecoms' argument. Clearly, the First Amendment right to free speech isn't absolute and unrestricted.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      The existence of intellectual property rights isn't really relevant to the telecoms' argument here.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        The similar existence of privacy rights and their conflict with the telecoms' right to free speech is, though.
        SamReidHughes 7y ago
        There isn't a similar existence of privacy rights.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        SCOTUS begs to differ, in Griswold v. Connecticut. So do various state laws.
        7y ago
volgar1x 7y ago
I don't know if they are evil or just trying it anyway and seeing what happens. French people have a saying for this You never know, on a misunderstanding it might actually work!
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymanbot 7y ago
Amendment right? who's their lawyers? ...Lionel Hutz attorney at law?
AdmiralAsshat 7y ago
First Amendment seems to mean whatever the hell we want it to mean, these days. 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-ban-at-virginia-rally-overturned/ https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/01/gun-groups-want-firearms-b...
dredmorbius 7y ago
Somewhat more information, including the plaintiffs (America's Communications Association, CTIA, NCTA, and USTelecom), in the referenced Ars Technica article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/isps-sue-maine-claim-web-privacy-law-violates-their-free-speech-rights/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/isps-sue-maine-c...
aswanson 7y ago
This is insane.
pnutjam 7y ago
I'm just going to leave this here, seems relevant: https://movetoamend.org/ https://movetoamend.org/
thepete2 7y ago
How did we arrive at the situation where roads are public, but internet isn't? I'd argue many more people use the internet than own a car.
m463 7y ago
Note the word "privacy" 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.

278 points by rahuldottech 7y ago

allovernow 7y ago

That sounds like a pretty desperate argument. What proportion of their revenue are they making from selling this data?

brenden2 7y ago
Presumably it's at least enough to keep the legal team gainfully employed.
52-6F-62 7y ago
I previously worked under the umbrella of a major Canadian telecom (though in their media arm—radio, publishing, television). 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.
- kitteh 7y ago
  Was this Rogers New Media? Just curious because my recollection is that they owned the network infrastructure for the cable internet side and were the first folks in Canada to go big on deep packet inspection boxes (aka Cisco pcube, which was from an acquisition of an Israeli compamy) to deal with "undesirable" traffic but also mining customer data.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I didn't work on that side of the company so I can't comment with accuracy (the entire entity was around 25,000 people at the time). Only what I've heard along the way. I know they wanted to leverage the data, but I didn't gather they had necessarily developed much use at the time. They were definitely interested in collecting data, however. edit: I'd like to add a disclaimer that my comments are as good as hearsay. I just wanted to add them for context.

12xo 7y ago

How perverted. They claim that the entity has a right to free speech? And worse, that somehow that entitles them to do as they please? Is Alan Dershowitz behind this?

auiya 7y ago

The US needs GDPR-equivalent laws ASAP.

xxpor 7y ago
If this argument succeeds, even GDPR wouldn't save us since they're making a constitutional argument, not an argument based on the US code.
- zahma 7y ago
  Certainly a court challenge would pit the 1st Amendment rights of the consumer against that of a corporation. Something along the lines of citizens have the right of freedom of expression that is not accumulated and traded. In a sane world, a corporation would not trump the rights of a private citizen: the purveyor of goods and services meant to improve the lives of citizens. Right..? right?! But after Citizens United, who could really be sure that the average citizen is any more important than a corporation's personhood.

comis 7y ago

> “Maine's decision to impose unique burdens on ISPs' speech—while ignoring the online and offline businesses that have and use the very same information and for the same and similar purposes as ISPs—represents discrimination between similarly situated speakers that is impermissible under the First Amendment,” the lawsuit claimed. I agree. The law should apply to everyone, not just ISPs.

turc1656 7y ago
Haha yep. It's lovely when the filer of the lawsuit raises a great point on how to throw out their case and further citizen protection, isn't it?

TallGuyShort 7y ago

I would be fine with that argument if they could get media companies on board with fair use and more limited copyright again. At least that would be consistent logic, but that won't happen.

ipython 7y ago

Sounds like I have an equal first amendment right to publicly expose the personal cell phone numbers and home addresses of every lawyer, corporate executive, and lobbyist who think this is a good idea.

sophacles 7y ago
No you don't. Those folks are a different class of people than you, a better class, a class that deserves privacy - us peons aren't important enough to have to worry about that stuff. That's what they'll argue anyway. They'll use different words, but whatever words they use will carry that message.
- gruez 7y ago
  Defeatist attitude aside, what would happen if we crowd funded a wikileaks-type organization that operates "as an ISP" and doxxed politicians/lobbyists/lawyers/isp executives?
  - sneak 7y ago
    You’d go to jail like weev did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev 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.
    - 7y ago

rs23296008n1 7y ago

Sure. Just get the corporate entity to say a single word. No representatives. No notes. No proxies. No robots. No automated voices. The actual corporate legal entity. Not even the CEO. No clever stand-ins with same name. 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.

muro 7y ago
A mute person has the right too :)
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  A mute person can write. Or sign. A corporate entity doesn't communicate in any way. Because... It obviously cannot.
  - dnautics 7y ago
    Freedom of speech exists so that entities are presumed to be able to say things without interference from the government. An absolutist stance such as yours results in things like governments disincorporating newspapers that publish politically unfavorable content simply because the newspaper is s corporation and it can't itself physically speak (or write something, or publish something) without a human intermediary.
mLuby 7y ago
I like where your head's at, but guardians speak on behalf of minors, lawyers speak on behalf of clients, and representatives speak on behalf of their electorate (in theory), so executives speaking on behalf of groups of employees isn't much different.
- simiones 7y ago
  On behalf of groups of investors, perhaps, not employees.

kitteh 7y ago

When I worked at a large telco/broadband provider in the 90s and onward such concepts of selling this data was forbidden and you'd get funny looks for suggesting it. Our leadership chain - comprised of a mixture of long tenured employees with mostly engineering backgrounds supported not wanting to sell this data as well. It wasn't until the mid 2000s when our leadership got swapped out with younger executives who'd do 2 year rotations across the company and were looking to do a fast big bang to wow others that would go down this road. It wasn't just selling data this new gang wanted, but DNS redirection (think for nxdomains), and ad insertion thru TCP seassion hijacking platforms. There were a number of startups who were happy to give us free gear to sniff & manipulate customer traffic and we'd get a cut of the ad money.

kabdib 7y ago

Wasn't Apple using the same argument when they refused to make custom iOS firmware with backdoors for the FBI a few years ago? I could be wrong. I guess my point is, this is a double-edged sword, like most freedoms.

fossuser 7y ago

For those that are unaware, if you live in California the recently passed CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) gives you a lot of new power to force companies to delete your data and let you opt-out of them selling it. For Comcast: https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/ccpa 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. [0] https://caprivacy.github.io/caprivacy/ https://caprivacy.github.io/caprivacy/

ouid 7y ago
>You can also do it for equifax, experian, and transunion. what, precisely, are the implications of this?
- fossuser 7y ago
  They don't remove data related to your FICO score that they can legally keep for that purpose. 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.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  Reset your credit completely... in the eyes of the corporations, you don't exist.
  - willis936 7y ago
    I simply do not believe that one piece of legislation could accomplish this. This is how money makes money. It will not stop for the law.

Panino 7y ago

The big telcos have always been horrible and they will never change. I used to work for a small provider in that industry and always hated USWest because of that experience. They will never change as long as they exist, whatever name they go by. 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.)

DailyHN 7y ago
I would love to see a playbook on making that happen.
- Panino 7y ago
  If you're asking how to create a municipal fiber ISP, take inspiration and guidance from existing success stories. It'll vary depending on the state and culture and require multiple steps. If telecoms have already bribed the state govt to ban municipal Internet, collect signatures for a ballot question on whether to allow municipalities to decide for themselves. Next, start a local campaign to promote municipal FTTH. There, keep your messaging simple, consistent, and on-point (see below). 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 values

ptah 7y ago

watering down freedom of speech because why not

takk309 7y ago
As soon as companies and businesses were considered "people" and got the same rights, it all became a farce.
- strictnein 7y ago
  Corporate personhood is a centuries old idea. It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. As a counter example that shows they are still not fully "people": a corporation cannot adopt a child or get married.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    It is what enables you to sign a contract with a company, for example. We'd be better off if we couldn't do this. Predatory credit would disappear.
    - strictnein 7y ago
      The entire financial system would disappear.
      - jessaustin 7y ago
        Wouldn't most of that be handled by corporations making agreements among themselves? I don't think "the entire financial system" is really based on hooking individual people on unsustainable credit.
        Ajedi32 7y ago
        So if I want to buy a house, but don't have enough to cover 100% of the cost in a single down payment I'm just SOL? 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.

ghastmaster 7y ago

If municipalities stop giving them local monopolies they can have rights again. Until then, they should be beholden to strict rules.

gumby 7y ago
What monopoly? Here in Palo Alto I have full consumer “choice”: comcast or att. 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.
- kube-system 7y ago
  You're lucky that you have that many options. You don't have to go too far into rural areas to find places where there isn't any coax on the poles. 24 million Americans don't have any options that the FCC considers as fixed broadband service (25/3mbps)
  - ghastmaster 7y ago
    I lived in one of those areas in the 90s. We had dial-up. I was incredibly happy when we moved to the city and were able to get broadband. I was shocked when I found out a friend who lives in my city today was still operating with broadband. He complained about his wife having trouble using voip while watching netflix, so I suggested he upgrade his router or move it. When I went over to install the new router I found a broadband modem...! His street is serviced by the same companies as mine. He is in an arguably affluent neighborhood. He had to switch companies to get to 50mbit+.
- ghastmaster 7y ago
  In most places the energy company owns the poles and the municipality grants them the right to be the sole energy provider. The access to the pole is limited to the cable company and the phone company(around here spectrum[cable] and cincinnati bell[phone]). The other option is satellite. Municipalities require payments for each lot that the company services whether or not they have a paying customer. These companies are given exclusive rights to access the poles.(Source=widowed spouse of TCI VP) 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.

CaptArmchair 7y ago

That's not how "free speech" works. That right isn't violated by privacy protection laws. 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: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy_of_correspondence

bluGill 7y ago
The US has the ninth amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_... which is the out for anything the founders didn't think of. (There is a massive amount of controversy around this, Wikipedia just scratches the surface)
SkyBelow 7y ago
>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. 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).

gumby 7y ago

Great: furniture movers should also have the free speech right to talk about my address, describe all my possessions, etc. 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.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Furniture movers do have that free speech right. It's completely kosher for them to chat with some friends in a bar about how weird your possessions are or how hard it was to get to your address. Maybe ISPs should have special restrictions the same way medical providers do, but there's no general principle that people who discover private things about you aren't allowed to talk about it.
- gumby 7y ago
  But I suspect people would be perturbed if the moving companies sold that information.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    Of course, and many people are perturbed that telecom companies sell their information. However, perturbed != illegal.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago

I think it's funny how high and mighty so many are on this site but if you look to your left and right YOU are the ones building this dystopia.

mfer 7y ago

I wonder... 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.

awinter-py 7y ago

I mean every platform is monetizing data. If the telcos are arguing 'google and facebook are the same as us, we should have the same business models' I kind of agree 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

34679 7y ago

There's a pretty big difference between the qualifiers used in the 1st and 4th Amendments. 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.

turc1656 7y ago
I don't believe that's accurate. I've heard first hand from lawyers that the bill of rights guarantees protections from government action, not other citizens or entities like corporations. That's why, for example, we have to have laws that make it illegal for people to break into your home and steal stuff. Otherwise, we could just apply the 4th amendment. 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.

bryanrasmussen 7y ago

Do I have a first amendment right to sell pirated Disney cartoons? on edit: obviously not because I'm not in the U.S but if I were?

kube-system 7y ago
US courts recognize many exceptions to the first amendment. IP rights fall into that category.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Which rather demolishes the telecoms' argument. Clearly, the First Amendment right to free speech isn't absolute and unrestricted.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    The existence of intellectual property rights isn't really relevant to the telecoms' argument here.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      The similar existence of privacy rights and their conflict with the telecoms' right to free speech is, though.
      - SamReidHughes 7y ago
        There isn't a similar existence of privacy rights.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        SCOTUS begs to differ, in Griswold v. Connecticut. So do various state laws.
        7y ago

volgar1x 7y ago

I don't know if they are evil or just trying it anyway and seeing what happens. French people have a saying for this You never know, on a misunderstanding it might actually work!

deleted 7y ago

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throwawaymanbot 7y ago

Amendment right? who's their lawyers? ...Lionel Hutz attorney at law?

AdmiralAsshat 7y ago

First Amendment seems to mean whatever the hell we want it to mean, these days. 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-ban-at-virginia-rally-overturned/ https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/01/gun-groups-want-firearms-b...

dredmorbius 7y ago

Somewhat more information, including the plaintiffs (America's Communications Association, CTIA, NCTA, and USTelecom), in the referenced Ars Technica article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/isps-sue-maine-claim-web-privacy-law-violates-their-free-speech-rights/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/isps-sue-maine-c...

aswanson 7y ago

This is insane.

pnutjam 7y ago

I'm just going to leave this here, seems relevant: https://movetoamend.org/ https://movetoamend.org/

thepete2 7y ago

How did we arrive at the situation where roads are public, but internet isn't? I'd argue many more people use the internet than own a car.

m463 7y ago

Note the word "privacy" 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.