eBay Exec. Boasts About Lack Of Users' Privacy

Vertically Integrated writes "The Register has an article about Joseph Sullivan, an eBay executive who has been bragging to 'an audience of law enforcement officials' about the auction site's disregard for the privacy of its users. How true this is is not known, but Sullivan is quoted in the article as saying: "When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities.""

Comments

Re:Ahh the horror!!!!

[Yokaze]

Of course, if the nice policeman asks about my colleagues, business partners, and neighbours, I will joyfully click the heals and report everything he wants to know.

No need for check and balances. What are subpoenas good for but hindering good policemen at their work.

In order to protect our wonderful democratic country, I will report any person, which reads suspicious books, or buys suspicious things.

Now, it is not like you should not cooperate with the police, but the way he speaks of it, he sounds a little bit too similar to the kind of person I imitated.

Re:Ahh the horror!!!!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are so smug.

Three words:
"Slippery Slope"
"Warrant"

If these do not cause you to at least reflect on the implications of the article, you may as well live in Argentina, circa 1977. I'm sure plenty good citizens in Buenos Aires said "I have no real expectation of privacy, but then again, I'm not diong anything wrong, so why should I care?"

It is precisely because these sorts of behaviors have been disallowed for law-enforcement and these freedoms have been upheld for individuals, that the US was never as heinous as Argentina or Spain or ....

There is no "magic" quality inherent in the United States that will guarantee the freedom and liberty of the people if you begin to trivialize or ignore the abandonment of these controls.

Then stop the scammers!

[mraymer]

eBay is full of scammers. I'm not even going to bother with links, just go to eBay and search for just about anything, and you'll see users with feedback in the negatives with reasons such as "this guy is a scammer" and "he never paid me" and "I hope this user is banned" etcetera...

If eBay does have all this user data, then why the hell aren't they using it to stop the scammers sooner? After a friend of mine got burned by selling a laptop to a bidder that used a stolen paypal account, I watched this scammer buy (steal) TWO MORE $1500 LAPTOPS before he lost his account.

So really, eBay. Stop the scammers. We'd all like that a lot. Besides, it's not like any privacy zealots use eBay; you can see anyone's buying/selling history just by clicking around in the feedback.