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ACLU Launches Privacy Lawsuit Against Yahoo!
testcase writes: "From the ACLU press release
'The suit, filed against Yahoo! by a user of the service's popular financial message boards, challenges the company's practice of disclosing a user's personal information to third parties without prior notice to the user. The full text of the suit is here "
A party may move to quash a supeona, without action needed by the recipient.
It is not a violation of a court order until an order to compell is issued by a court.
There are many cases where a company filed a lawsuit, then dropped it after getting the names.
At the very least, Yahoo should have contacted the user, with a small amount of time to respond with a copy of the motion to quash that had been entered in the court.
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American ./ readers may be interested in this site:
http://www.knowledge-basket.co.n z/privacy/top.html
Thats just you, you're probably a pervert in denial - get help.
You missed my point. Read the policy--it notifies you they will release your information when legally required, and doesn't say that they will notify you first. The ACLU says that they should--or must--notify you first, because of your right to privacy. I agree with the ACLU on this.
You'll see the same sort of language on credit-card agreements and all sorts of other consumer contracts. My understanding (IANAL and all that) is that from a legal standpoint you are considered "notified" when you receive a copy of the agreement for all situations described therein, except for those cases where the agreement provides for further notification.
This is based on my own reading of the policy and not based on any other information from Yahoo! or others. I assume you can say the same for your opinion. But consider this: if you are right, the case boils down to contract law, and thus won't set any precdence with regards to privacy. I doubt that you want that--the ACLU certainly doesn't. (And, yes, I've been a member.)
I understand that with IP addresses, etc you have less control of (unless you want to get techy and spoof) but you can certainly limit the amount of personally identifiable data you send out. I personally feel that it is important to stuff the warehouses with bunk. Increase the noise to signal ratio. Some ideas to this end:
In cases where you NEED to give personally identifiable information (i.e. ISP service, etc) why not throw in some creative spelling? Let 'em track David Smith, Daveed Smyth, and Dayvid Smeth.
Everytime you are in a store that offers one of those shopper member tracking cards (i.e. SafeWay), get one for a different person.. I've got one for Don T. Botherme and Anita Prawduct..
If you need to give out a date of birth, take the first day of the month you were born on (easy to remember)
Another thing I do.. (once tracked and marketed to) When dealing with physical junk mail, I save all the postage paid return envelopes and return the contents of the junk mail to the sender..
-
air and light and time and space
Re-read your own post. The clause you quote refers to what Yahoo!'s Privacy Policy document will tell you, not what Yahoo! will or won't tell somebody else. And in fact, if you take the time to read the document itself, (it's pretty long, though more readable than most legalease) you'll see that Yahoo! says they will release personal info when requested to in a legal action. It says nothing about notifying you first.
So there you have it. They have told you "with whom your information may be shared," just as they promised. They have followed their own rules to the letter. Now, you and I may not like the policy they describe; it may not even be a legal policy--I'm sure the ACLU will assert it isn't. But the only petards being hoisted here is you and the moderators who didn't bother to read this, and completely mis-construed the introductory paragraph to their policy as the policy itself.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
p df
Thursday, May 11, 2000
NEW YORK--A federal lawsuit filed today in California could establish important protections for Internet privacy and anonymity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
The suit, filed against Yahoo! by a user of the service's popular financial message boards, challenges the company's practice of disclosing a user's personal information to third parties without prior notice to the user.
Privacy and free speech advocates, including EPIC and the ACLU, have criticized Yahoo!'s policy on the ground that Internet users have a right to communicate anonymously and usually do so for valid reasons.
Over the past year, Yahoo! has been inundated with subpoenas issued by companies seeking the identities of individuals anonymously posting information critical of the firms and their executives.
"The right to anonymous speech should not be breached so easily," said Chris Hansen, a national ACLU lawyer who specializes in Internet speech.
Without notifying the targeted users, and without assessing the validity of the legal claims underlying the subpoenas, Yahoo! systematically discloses identifying information such as users' names, e-mail addresses and Internet protocol addresses. Yahoo! is unique among major online companies in its refusal to notify its users of such subpoenas and provide them with an opportunity to challenge the information requests.
Hansen said that the ACLU favors at least two legal protections for anonymous chatters. "Any complaint filed in court against an unknown Internet defendant should include specifics of the allegedly objectionable postings," he said.
"Also, a judge should not allow a lawyer to issue subpoenas in these cases without requiring that the Internet service provider notify the potential defendant that someone is seeking information about him and giving him an opportunity to enter court to protect his anonymity."
According to David L. Sobel, EPIC's General Counsel, "online anonymity plays a critical role in fostering free expression on the Internet, and has clearly contributed to the popularity of the medium."
"The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that anonymity is a constitutional right, but practices such as those of Yahoo! may make that right illusory online," he added.
The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles by "Aquacool_2000," a pseudonymous Yahoo! user whose personal information was disclosed to AnswerThink Consulting Group, Inc., a publicly held company.
A copy of the lawsuit (in PDF) is available at:
http://www.epic.org/anonymity/aquacool_complaint.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
I've tried using their stuff a couple of times, and the browsing performance has always sucked - and I have a 1.1MB direct connection to the net.
Plus, you can't run ANY scripting, in order to maintain your anonymity (because there wasn't an easy way for them to protect you from malicious scripts).
They have some interesting concepts, but I'm not sold on it yet.
That's not how lawyers think.
Ordinary people, when faced with something like a court order, think "Gee, I'd better obey that or I'll be in contempt of court. It's illegal to ignore one of these things. I don't want to do something illegal." We have respect for the law and the courts, and by and large, we have no interest in taking every last traffic ticket, as it were, all the way to the Supreme Court, just to exercise a theoretical right to do so.
Lawyers, on the other hand, think "Gee, how long can I hold out against the court? Is there some way I can not comply with this order and get away with it? Failing that, how long can I stall them?" Lawyers have no respect for the legal system -- it merely exists to be exploited to produce the greatest personal benefit possible.
As the ACLU comprises mostly lawyers and their sympathizers, they can't help but misunderstand if a company voluntarily complies with a court order without first fighting it tooth and nail. If Yahoo! does this, the ACLU will naturally think that it is only to further some nefarious anti-privacy agenda. In my mind, it is much simpler: Yahoo! does not have anything to gain by throwing extra legal resources into guarding their users' privacy. Why should they? They never said they would. Users have never demanded it of them. Probably nobody has ever written to Yahoo! asking them to change their privacy policy to guarantee some sort of legal defense of anonymity.
It's the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. Most people think in terms of the spirit of the law; lawyers are experts in knowing the exact letter of the law, and what it does and doesn't let them get away with.
Outside the context of legal practice, people who only think in terms of personal gain, and in terms of what literal rights they have, as opposed to what can be done to help the system as a whole run smoothly -- well, there are a lot of unflattering words for such people, like "obnoxious".
P.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
While the ACLU tends to be a rabid bunch of lawyers with too much time on their hands (the Onion article about the ACLU suing the police for stopping someone from blowing up the ACLU HQ comes to mind), I'd have to go with them on this one.
1) The Onion article was satirizing the ACLU's unwavering dedication to freedom of expression, not their overlitigiousness.
2) Can you name me a SINGLE CASE brought by the ACLU that wasn't germane and noble? I get pretty defensive about this because much of my community is Baptist, and to Baptists the (ACLU==Satan). Ergo, I hear all SORTS of shit that the ACLU supposedly did that is patently and ridiculously false. So I get a little defensive.
- Rev.
Can you name me a SINGLE CASE brought by the ACLU that wasn't germane and noble?
Sure. (Actually, I can describe it for you - I don't have the cite handy.)
Man had a legally-owned gun locked in the safe at his office. Crook cracks the safe and steals the gun. Later, stolen gun is used in a crime where a victim is shot and injured. Victim sues the person from whom the gun was stolen. ACLU provides the lawyers for the plantif.
(For completeness: The guy whose gun was stolen from his office safe also held a post at the NRA.)
This was the same year the ACLU defended the American NAZI Party's right to march through a Polish suburb of Chicago. (I remember that because a Jewish friend didn't renew her ACLU membership the next time it came up. The ACLU asked her if it was because of the march. Nope: She thought the NAZIs should be able to march - at least partly so she could tell who they were and so they'd come within broom range of the Polish immigrants. B-) She quit over the suit against the guy whose gun was stolen and misused.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I understand their complaint that Yahoo should notify them, but isn't the main problem with the courts.
:)
If Yahoo receives a subpoena, should it not obey the court?
Another thought: if Yahoo tries to defend against the subpoena, it might be held liable for the content. By just passing the information under court order, they remove themselves from the appearance of moderation. In courts, moderation == liability for content.
All thoughts above are just ideas. Assembly language would be easier to develop in than learning law.
Seems like the ACLU's lawyers are trying to rig the game so no one can win (except themselves of course).
If you don't comply with a subpoena, you go to jail. Or, I guess the judge issuing the subpoena would slap down some hefty fines in the case of a corperation like Yahoo.
But if you *DO* obey the laful order of a court of law...
... the ACLU comes in and tries to sue you into oblivion?!?!?!?
You don't have to be any kind of lawyer to know that this kind of no-win situation is patently ridiculous. Just what ARE you supposed to do in a situation like this?
Sounds to me like this aquadrool person is miffed that Yahoo didn't fight his battle against the plantiff for him, and now wants to be seen as some poor victim of the big evil corperate Yahoo giant.
john
Imagine all the people...
Of course Yahoo is going to roll over and give away user profiles - everyone does.
If you want to protect your privacy, change your isp.
www.zeroknowledge.com - the world's only encrypted anonymous ISP. There is NO WAY to trace you whatsoever. Zeroknowledge can't even trace you when you're using their servers - and you're encrypted and routed through 3 countries first. A legal nightmare.
I use zeroknowledge and I post with impunity.
They sell a total privacy solution too - complete with information on how to protect yourself from places like yahoo.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Sounds like a direct violation of this clause.
It's also not like users aren't given fair warning (or that it's done as the press release states: "Without notifying the targeted users". Yahoo! has a very detailed Privacy Policy that explicitly states the following:
Based on my reading, they don't even have to wait for a court order as long as someone feels they were harmed.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Their is a number of cases that keep the information about keeping the speakers of certain things private. Revealing this information quell full expression of free speech.
On the other hand, if one publishes truly defamatory information, then there is a responsibility for it. There has been cases for mentioned in the news commpanies filing lawsuits, and once they get the names, they will cease the prosecution of the case.
This type of action is obviously abusive. Now, if Yahoo (or someone else) receives a nasty letter from a lawyer, w/o giving a chance for the individual to oppose(via a motion to quash), it is wrong.
In a lawsuit, if an attorney sends a request for information, it is not required to be provided until the court compels it.
How about a new acronym? YAFAL - Yet Another Friggen Abusive Lawsuit.
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What if the company were dumping toxic chemicals into the river late at night and Aquacool_2000 was blowing the whistle on them? Shouldn't workers be able to report evil doings by their company, forcing them to correct their actions, without jeopardizing their position at the company? If spilling the beans about bad things your company is doing means certain termination then employees will be unlikely to inform the public at all.
A judge can rule that the public's interest in having this person remain anonymous, and remain at the company is more important than the company's interest in finding out who this person is so they can be fired. That is the issue here. Yahoo isn't allowing the person to come before the judge to make that decision. Yahoo is simply rolling over and providing the information without giving the affected person any recourse.
Burris