Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Sued Over Internet Data Gathering
saikou writes: "Slashdot already had an article about Comcast using transparent cache systems to track their cable modem users' browsing habits (purely for improvment of their networks, of course) and now here's the follow-up. Newsbyte posted yesterday a story about the lawsuit, demanding $100 per day of tracking for each customer. I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s) :)" Update: 05/25 12:37 GMT by T : burgburgburg points to a New York Times article about the case, and reminds you of two previous mentions of the controversial user-tracking effort (one, two).
It's good to see that Comcast haven't, in this case, been able to use general technical ignorance to bamboozle their way out of this one.
It looks as if they actually expected to get away with claiming they needed that info for caching purposes. I hope that they're nicely stunned at being asked to prove why they felt it necessary to tie that info back to individual user identities.
BTW, I presume that most /.ers have always assumed that their ISP was tracking their online activities.
Right of way for protection of data privacy - are we the people?
. txt. Over 40 international civil rights organizations and user groups in the internet subscribed to this letter. Til now the signatures of more than 7500 people all over the world were registered.
Are you really sure you're innocent? Do you expect your representatives which have been elected by youself to believe into your integrity without needing evidence? A minority of the European Parliament seems to be in doubt and precautiously suspects its citizens at the time being. On May 29 2002 in Brussels will be vote if the fundamental rights of the citizens in Europe as there are protection of privacy, freedom of speech and the presumption of innocense should be abolished. Law enforcement authorities shall be authorized to store any data about electronic communications of EU-citizens. The most important rights are endangered to be sacrificed in the course of fight agains terrorism.
Neither the individual case nor interim measures will be considered when it will come to storing data. Thus data would not be saved temporary or in an appropriate manner. Regarding the intention of a part of the European Parliament retention of all individuals' electronic communication shall be done without control to enable further investigations about illegal actions in the future. Therewith all citizens will be assumed to be potential criminals. On April 18 this violation of the basic rights was defeated by a close vote.
For this narrow majority to become an absolute one a letter to the European Parliament was phrased which can be signed here:
http://stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter
If you don't agree with your government suspecting you to be a potential terrorist and storing all your electronic communication without a cause you should sign this letter.
It isn't so much the commercial use of this information that bothers me but, rather, that it's being accumulated in the first place leaves the door open for shady government agencies to have access to it in a harder to fight way than something slightly more attributable and, therefore, possible to fight such as Carnivore.
If you think about it, there was no real reason for the FBI to stick their neck out like that with an actual hardware wire-tap of their own when most ISPs would probably bend over backwards to share the info they've already collected for commercial reasons.
Want to know who's been visiting dangerous, subversive websites? Simply send Agent Crewcut to play a few rounds of golf with CEO Weasel and suggest that there might be some juicy government contracts coming up for grabs.
IANAL, but heres the links to what I believe to be the relevant laws comcast may have violated (mainly for being a cable company) Cable TV Privacy Act of 1994Which in short provides provisions that limit:
(A) the nature of personally identifiable information collected or to be collected with respect to the subscriber and the nature of the use of such information;
(B) the nature, frequency, and purpose of any disclosure which may be made of such information, including an identification of the types of persons to whom the disclosure may be made;
(C) the period during which such information will be maintained by the cable operator;
(D) the times and place at which the subscriber may have access to such information in accordance with subsection (d) of this section; and
(E) the limitations provided by this section with respect to the collection and disclosure of information by a cable operator and the right of the subscriber under subsections (f) and (h) of this section to enforce such limitations.
As well if I'm not incorrect here,the ECPA
More fun privacy law here, Privacy Act of 1974
And of course if they customer has a kid under 13 who they gathered data on there was another law I just couldn't quite manage to find in regards to making this pretty illegal. And you can't make your customers opt out of federal law last I checked.
Anyway, it hasn't been my experience that lawyers take cases they have no chance of winning where the payout is based on them winning.
I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s)
We could endlessly repeat well-worn ideas yet never think about them, but let's try:
People complain that class action contingency attorneys pull a scam on their targets (e.g. Comcast) and their clients (e.g. Comcasts customers) and take all the $. Think about it; contingency lawyers (lawyers that collect large sums if they win, rather than smaller sums win or lose) and class action (grouping large numbers of small complaints into one big one: e.g. $100 damages * 1 million people = $100 million lawsuit) are the only way the less-than-rich get access to our court system.
o Contingency lawyers let everyone, not just the rich, use our court system. Our court system was too expensive for anyone but the rich. You must have a lawyer (technically you can represent yourself, just like my grandmother is technically allowed to hack the Linux kernel), and lawyers are expensive. If you couldn't afford one, no justice for you -- very democratic. Now, contingency lawyers take your case based on the hope you'll win and be able to pay them. Think about it -- would you work hundreds (or more) hours, hire experts and make every other investment at your own expense, and risk that if you lose (the other side has attorneys too) that you get $0.00? All that time, effort and money completely sunk? No way to buy dinner? Pay the mortgage? Put the kids through college? Even if you do win, you work now and get paid next year. Now you understand why contingency lawyers demand a larger percentage when they win.
o What other check, besides Class Action, is there on corporations screwing the millions of individuals who buy their products, work for them, share communities with them and invest hard-earned money in them? There aren't enough gov't regulators -- they couldn't even stop the multi-billion dollar Savings and Loan or Enron or other huge scandals -- can they protect the $10,000 of pension money Jane Elderly invested in Creative Financial Reporting Inc.? The citizens of a polluted neighborhood whose health is at risk? Or simply Ed Jones who wasted on their lies about their useless product? What deters some executive from twisting the financial statements, or ignoring the pollution or lying to consumers, simply to protect his job? What motivates the Board of Directors to question instead of rubber stamping their buddy the CEO who gave them their cushy jobs? It's not fear of the a few regulators; it's fear of massive lawsuits on behalf of every one of those people they might screw.
Sure, there are some bad lawyers who fleece the system, but so do some companies, doctors, politicians, bankers, police, programmers, etc. etc. Like everyone else, there are good lawyers and bad ones, and they all have their good and bad days. Plus, lawyers can't fleece anyone unless a jury and/or judge helps.
Funny that it's the part of our court system that serves the politically weak, not the part that serves the RIAA, the Fortune 500 corporations, etc., that gets all the mainstream criticism.
I'm just going to assume that the tracking comes from the possiblity of the merge with AT&T. The freep had a really good article yesterday about Comcast not being too happy with the bandwidth consupmtion from users.
"Comcast points out that it is not cheap to provide high-speed service to a million customers, as it does now. At its network operations center in Cherry Hill, N.J., workers electronically monitor more than 50,000 pieces of equipment throughout the company's broadband network."
It wouldn't be surprising if they were tracking "equipment" (users more like it) to see who the bandwidth "hogs" are.
Better take advantage of Usenet acess while it lasts!
The right to swing *their* fist stops where the customers nose begins.
There are limits to what you can do with your property,
and those limits are in part defined by injury it causes others.
If you want to do something as egregious as Comcast
(i.e. something your customers wouldn't reasonably expect you to do)
then you had damn well better state that up front in large print.
In other words, it is like they like they don't have a right
to maintain their network anyway they want.
Unless the TOS states in large print
"WE WILL LOG YOUR ACTIVITY AND SELL IT TO THIRD PARTIES"
then they are at fault.
There are limits, and Comcast exceeded them.
-- this is not a
The point, for Comcast customers, is not the money. It's only $100; how much compensation do they deserve? It's the privacy and Comcast's behavior. If Comcast loses, neither they nor other ISPs will take a similar risk again. Isn't privacy valuable?
The lawyers take a big financial risk. For risking tens of thousands of their own money (are you paying their secretaries, office rent, research, etc.) and spending so much of their life on the case, should they get only the good feeling of having improved privacy for Americans (if they win)?
The Comcast customers get $xx buck each and privacy. The attorneys who put in their time and money, not knowing if they'd get it back, they get the cash.
Just an off-the-wall idea... Has it ever occurred to you that the reason it's slow, could also be because they haven't set up a cache for you to use? Maybe you and a hundred other people like you, are all using the same pipes for the same content at the same time, transmitted a hundred times instead of once.
Somewhere at some ISP, some guy is looking at blinkenlights, shaking his head with sadness as a thousand people all download the exact same ninety megabyte file containing a movie trailer. And then the phone rings: "My download is going slow," says the annoyed customer.
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