> lawmakers in November accused[1] the FCC of failing to protect consumers’ privacy, and said that major wireless carriers were disclosing real-time location to data compilers without consumers’ consent or knowledge. The information could be obtained by companies including bounty hunters, the lawmakers said in a letter.
> [1]: https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycomme...
> -- as reported by Bloomburg
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-31/wireless-...
The FCC really has become just a lobbying goat under Pai. Yikes.
This is presumably due to all transactions outside of the US requiring chip, but those in the US only requiring swipe.
This has nothing to do with them being able to get your location from their app.
Bounce over to this comment on another front page post for another great example:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States
As a parallel statement:
> So it's okay for defense contractors to sell tanks to the government but not commercially? I'd love to see a legal analysis of that argument.
The government, Democrats and Republicans, basically do whatever corporations want, so this action is surprising and welcome.
It's the only reason in my mind the government should have access to that info, and it's a damn good one
Where's the opt-out button on my device to ensure my 4th Amendment right is exercised?
Oh, right. It's forced. "Freedom".
I don't see where the article addresses that point. While it has some resemblance, seems like a different issue covered by different parts of law.
Ask the FCC if they believe sharing to government is legal.
Certainly to resolve customer billing disputes, I'm sure.
https://www.eff.org/cases/hemisphere
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record
http://epic.org/privacy/nsa/Section-215-Order-to-Verizon.pdf
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VZ
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TMUS
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/S
Looks like only Sprint and T-mobile are down, and only slightly (2%).
hint: it's all of them
Alternativedata.org
The company office would have to operate according to the same rules as a prison. Employees on arrival are security-checked the same way prisoners would be when they arrive for the first time. Rules about talking between cells, and device use, are the same as a prison. Once you get to your prison office, and you have your prison clothes on, you can work on paper.
I think this should be an existing prison. If a company wants to instead hire prison guards and do renovations to make their existing office work like a prison, I could be flexible to that.
Presumably all the employees would rather quit than work in prison. Sounds okay to me.
Presumably all investors would pressure the CEO to avoid getting the company put in prison because it would be a real productivity problem. Sounds okay to me.
i'm not sure what our excuse is, however.
Fines should presumably start small and have a graduated structure to prevent the "just a business expense" approach from becoming a viable one.
The current regulatory problems are due almost entirely (IMO) to lack of active enforcement; why care what the penalty is if you know it won't happen to you regardless?
Why? If I drive drunk and a cop pulls me over, lack of knowledge is no defense. As the head of a company, why is a lack of knowledge of the goings-on of the company a defense? If you don't know the goings-on when you are in a position to, at the very least that should be categorized as criminally negligent.
Also: beware what you wish for. Criminal law may allow your bloodlust to be satisfied. But it’s just as likely that the higher burden of proof it requires, and various other differences such as the 5th amendment, make prosecution difficult or impossible.
"Fine" is a euphemism for market price. If the profits outweigh the fines and the poor PR can be controlled in a timely manner, then they'll do it every time.
I think income-based fines are illegal under ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ though, in the United States, (not a lawyer), so maybe that won’t fly.
The first case is a far far bigger privacy concern to me, and seems to be what mobile networks were doing. Facebook, Google, and Microsoft are doing the latter.
Geolocation information shouldn't be considered a desirable dataasset to hold onto as a monetizable asset at all at the level of granularity that enables individual resolution.
Disclaimer: I work at Google.
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-30/google-an...
But Google created the entire damned infrastructure and environment which makes precisely that effect possible, no matter how thinly you slice the hairs on what it is you call the practice.
They don't exist in international waters.
Data is the cash cow that lets them sell ads. Why would they give away the cash cow and cut themselves, the middlemen, out of the picture?
