Slashdot Mirror
Northwest Privacy Lawsuit Dismissed
dritan writes "News.com is reporting that a judge has tossed out a privacy lawsuit against Northwest airlines. The plaintiffs claimed that their privacy was violated when Northwest gave their information to the government. From the judge: 'Although Northwest had a privacy policy for information included on the Web site, plaintiffs do not contend that they actually read the privacy policy prior to providing Northwest with their personal information. Thus, plaintiffs' expectation of privacy was low.' Do you always read the privacy policy?" If you haven't read a particular EULA, does that mean it doesn't apply either? Here is the Judge's order (PDF).
From the court...
Further, the disclosure here was not to the public at large, but rather was to a government agency in the wake of a terrorist attack that called into question the security of the nation's transportation
system. Northwest's motives in disclosing the information cannot be questioned... the Court finds as a matter of law that the disclosure of Plaintiffs' personal information would not be highly offensive to a reasonable person and that Plaintiffs have failed to state a claim for intrusion upon seclusion.
Whoa... citing 9/11 as a reason why privacy rules should be ignored and a court saying that you can't question the motivations of those who are hiding behing a shield preventing terror attacks?
The fact that Northwest was doing this to fight for the side of good and that they didn't profit from this at all are mitigating factors that soften the blow, but should not be used to waive off the foul entirely. The whole point of the War on Terror is to protect our system of law... letting it to start going down the slippery slope towards an opressive system is exactly the way the terrorists want to push us.
...often rule that when not read an EULA is void. This has happened several times. Unfortunatelly there are not many ways to force a luser to read an EULA... remotely....
I am gathering that the only information they submitted was information gathered when tickets were purchased online and through their web site only.
Hmmm.
Unfortantely, the ruling is knocking the case on several other fronts as well. Even if the plantiffs had claimed to have read the statement, the ruling says that wouldn't have been enough because privacy policies do not form a contract in the first place.
The article is a bit vague on the details. It appears that the privacy policy doesn't actually imply it's a contract.
Makes a complete mockery of privacy policies, of course.
Having said that, I think the court erred. If a company has a privacy policy, and the court says unless we read it and understand it we have "a low expectation of privacy"? That to me makes zero sense.
What should have happened was the government gathers the information in a time of vulnerability. Then after everything settles the courts order the information should not have been released. It gives us the best of both worlds. We can be protected in times of turbulence, and we can still have out fundamental rights protected in good times. That way the information is destroyed, no real damage done.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
what if u only had to read one standardised privacy EULA in you life time. wouldnt it make more sense that your rights to privacy were all in one space and everyone used the same standard. i realise this puts alot of lawyers out of jobs writing these things or who ever it is that makes them.
wouldnt it be easyer for all of us when we install programs with EULA's. If all said EULA's were the same.
Some thing like this would pop up instead
do you accept the privacy EULA Standard 1.0.3.1 set down by such and such agency.
uh oh. i think i'm making to much sense. i should be more careful or i might burn down the internet by accident.
Non-smokers die every day --Bill Hicks
If you ever go out and buy something like Knight os the Old Republic for the Xbox, turn to the back pages of the manual and read the EULA.
EULAs have begun to appear in many video games recently. They're usually amoung the most draconian, restrictive and probobly illegal EULAs to date, saying thing like the company reserves the right to recind all support, take the software from you, snoop on what your doing with it online and of course is not liable for ANY AND ALL damage that may be incurred from the software.
Most people I know never even read the manual, let alone the EULA. A lot of the agreements state that just by opening the box( the EULA is sealed within the box) you have agreed to the terms!
I know myself that I usually never do any more than glance at EULAs and I've certainly never gotten to the bottom of the Microsoft EULA.
Seemingly this judge has ruled that privacy policies, in themselves agreements, only apply if you read them. Usually this could be extended to other (unsigned)agreements. But of course we must Remember!!
EULAs are to do with COMPUTERS!!!
That means DCMA restrictions, patents and copyright rules all apply in computer mode. Meaning of course that normal rules _DO NOT APPLY_
. You have no rights, but many responsibilites.
And of course no privacy!
May the Maths Be with you!
If a retailer sells you off-the-shelf software, you have all the normal rights that copyright gives you without needing to agree to the EULA.
So, you can load the software onto your computer, make a backup copy, and even sell the software on (provided you remove it from your computer and destroy the backup copy). You are allowed to reverse-engineer the software for interoperability purposes.
The EULA has no legal standing. For a company to be able to restrict your regular rights, they need a "fair contract" -- that is, you must meet with a representative of a company, both you and they must draw up a contract, and each clause of the contract must be accepted or denied by you or them. A contract is not "fair" unless you have the opportunity to remove any clause you dislike. Either you cannot agree on a contract, or you both agree to and sign a contract that both parties had full control over.
The GNU GPL avoids this, because its clauses only kick in when you want to do something that copyright does not generally give you a right to do -- redistribute multiple copies of the software. Therefore, you can only get this right by agreeing to the GPL, or contacting the copyright holder to negotiate a fair contract.
Your arguments are idealistic and you don't touch on the deeper complexities involved here. Your comparison of our civil liberties to the rearing of a child is completely off-base. Searching your child is not an illegal search. The citizens of the United States are not the government's children.
There is no such thing as the "lesser of two evils" here. You can't PICK, it's not that easy. "I don't want terrorism, so therefore I choose to let the government completely invade the privacy of every citizen."
There is a concept of the slippery slope and unthethered and unchecked power in one wing of our government. The basis of the entire US system is the idea of checks-and-balances, that no wing of the government will act without another doing a sanity check. Where is this sanity check coming from in this instance? Never forget that absolute power corrupts absoultely.
So the government knows I went to Hawaii, big deal right? But what if they track where I go every day on my way to work, then, track my grocery shopping, then my spending habits, etc etc. What if they put this in a database and constantly monitor all our rights. Who is sanity checking their use of all this information?
The point here is that by analyzing these very issues we are keeping the people in office honest. And do you really believe that the people we voted into office have anything to do with this? Your local congressman is not the wing of government collecting your flight information from NWA. That's the whole problem here!
The answer to why the lawsuit failed is right here:
"Even if the privacy policy was sufficiently definite and Plaintiffs had alleged that they read the policy before giving their information to Northwest, it is likely that Plaintiffs' contract and warranty claims would fail as a matter of law. Defendants point out that Plaintiffs have failed to allege any contractual damages arising out of the alleged breach. As Defendants note, the damages Plaintiffs claim are damages arising out of the torts alleged in the Amended Complaint, not damages arising out of the alleged contract. Damages are an essential element of a breach of contract claim, and the failure to allege damages would be fatal to Plaintiffs' contract claims. Sloggy v. Crescent Creamery Co., 75 N.W. 225, 226 (Minn. 1898)."
What the lawyers FAILED to present was damages. Dropping the fact that it wasn't a contract and the plaintiffs actually read the policy, they failed to show any damages as a result of the release of personal information.
Hmmm.
you cannot sign away rights to redress a problem that has not occured yet.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I wonder about all those contracts on the computer that you just click a button that says "I agree." Are they now all invalid because you didn't sign them? What if you didn't read it? I always thought they were illegal anyway. All legal documents I know of have to be signed and dated. Now if the text is already backed by law, then there is no need of a contract. Say, if the wrong person clicked "I agree" no one would know. You could always come back on the ISP or "contract" provider that they have no proof that you clicked on the "contract." You could really get away with anything! Whatever is in the contract that is not backed up by a signature can be thrown out in court.
If privacy policies can't be enforced since people don't read them and hence "expectation of privacy is low", are EULAs unenforcable since companies know people don't read them?
Last post!
If you read the actual finding, you'll see that the plaintiffs' failure to read the privacy policy wasn't really the basis of the ruling. The judge determined that the privacy policy didn't consitute a contract and, even if it had, the plaintiffs didn't show any damages as a result of the breech (breach?), which is necessary for to make a breech of contract claim.
I am noticing a lot of cases taken to the courts that are being fought badly and lost. I am wondering if this is on purpose by the forces of evil in order to set bad precendences that the lower courts must abide by.