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

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

#41

Post by cmurf »

sophacles wrote: post #25
ipython wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Privacy isn't a right. It's a product you buy. Rich people are better. They deserve more and better versions of all products: Justice, education, health care...

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

#42

Post by Retric »

sneak wrote: post #38
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You’d go to jail like weev did. 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&…

Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, of which he served approximately 13 months before the conviction was vacated by a higher court. That’s not several years.

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

#45

Post by sneak »

Retric wrote: post #42
sneak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d go to jail like weev did. 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&…

Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, of which he served approximately 13 months before the conviction was vacated by a higher court. That’s not several years.

He was in jail (holding in Essex County jail in NJ) for the second ~half of the trial as well, as even before he was convicted, he was stripped of many rights and due to FBI harassment of all potential employers was unable to support himself to their standards.

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

#46

Post by mannykannot »

Misdicorl wrote: post #22
rs23296008n1 wrote: post #10

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 do…

How do you handle the us government censoring newspapers, Wikipedia, etcetc if this is your demand?

In the US, freedom of the press is explicily stated in the 1st. amendment to the constitution. It does not depend on any legal theory of publishing corporations being people.

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

#47

Post by Panino »

DailyHN wrote: post #19
Panino wrote: post #15

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…

I would love to see a playbook on making that happen.

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

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

#48

Post by 52-6F-62 »

kitteh wrote: post #18
52-6F-62 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 manage…

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.

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.

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

#49

Post by briandear »

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #10

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 do…

This would apply to political parties as well? Those are corporations as well — spending billions “speaking.”

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

#50

Post by awinter-py »

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

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