[ale] OT: Forget Comcast, I wanna move to Germany!

[Jeff Lightner]

The law that prevents it is called the Constitution.  The government is
not allowed to "search and seize" without due process.   The fact that
someone chooses to collude with illegal NSA requests doesn't make such a
request legal.  The fact that they saw it necessary to change their
policy suggests that they knew they were doing something that could
probably be challenged in court just based on their own policy so they
were likely violating civil code as well.

Notice that others such as Google are doing the right thing by
challenging such illegal requests in court.

However my original suggestion didn't mention the law - it was about the
power of the consumer to vote with their feet.  In my post I didn't say
take them to court - I said to drop their services until they understood
that there was a "cost" of asserting non-existent ownership rights.

The fact is until this story broke it didn't occur to anyone that we
needed a separate law to make corporations deny such requests.  In the
70s the CIA was found to be spying on Americans wholesale and was quite
properly IMO admonished for this.  Having an agency hundreds of times
larger do it doesn't give me much confidence about that agency's
"defense of freedom".
As we told Fujimoro in Peru - you can't protect democracy by
overthrowing it.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
To: ale at ale.org
Popovitch
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 2:31 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: Forget Comcast, I wanna move to Germany!

On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 14:23 -0400, Jeff Lightner wrote:
> Based on that logic your Doctor should be able to tell anyone he wants
> that you have herpes.   You were in his office and used his diagnostic
> tools to find out about it.

Except that there is a LAW to prevent that.  There is no law to prevent
AT&T from communicating information to whoever they want, except for
some customer data (i.e. credit card number, ssn, etc.)  Blame congress
if you feel there is a need for a law they haven't provided.

> The "network" they "own" is interconnected and regulated by the
> Government.  The "bandwidth" for wireless is also owned by "the
people"
> and licensed rather than owned by them.   Even the landline uses
> "public" right of way so is not truly "owned" by them either.  

:-) right of way is licensed.  Complain to your county/city
commissioners.


> For all these reasons telecom is and should be regulated.   

Agreed.  If they aren't regulated blame your local/state/fed
representatives.

> They are selling a "service" to me - that does NOT give them the right
to reveal details of
> how I use that "service" to third parties without my consent in the
> absence of the due process provided for in the Constitution for
> obtaining warrants.

Why not.  What law/contract prevents them?   Don't blame AT&T for not
violating any laws that don't exist.  Place your blame where it belongs,
not where you feel it should be. ;-)

-Jim P.




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