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US Judge Bars Unauthorized Sales of Phone Records
The Register delivers the good news that a US federal judge had slapped down the practice of pretexting and ordered a Wyoming company to pay almost $200,000; AccuSearch was also permanently barred from selling individuals' phone records without their permission. The FTC had filed suit in 2006 against the company and four others. AccuSearch had advertised a service that made phone records of any individual available for a fee. The current article makes no mention of whatever became of the other four accused data brokers.
Since when has the US government cared about the privacy of individuals?
echo YOUR_OPINION >
How in the hell did this firm gain access to peoples' phone records in the first place? I guess I don't know enough about how this works, but I thought it was illegal for the phone company to provide such records to a private firm without a court order. Hell, even cops have to get warrants to go through phone records, right?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
NSA
CIA
FBI
DHS
Why do the trolls and crapflooders have to keep saying "nigger" lately? Really now wtf is wrong with you people?
The 3 letter agencies don't have to buy their phone records
...contrary to the deranged, misleading, false ramblings of liberal Chicken Littles.
Hm. Coward, indeed.
This is how spammers get your number, I'm guessing? If so, does this mean no more phone spam? *Awaits the inevitable denial of such high hopes*
But a judge telling a firm that they can't do it any more isn't NEARLY as good as congress making it a big ol' Federal No-No. So, c'mon, Pelosi. Reid? Where's all of that protect-the-little-guy stuff? Hillary? Obama? Where are the firey populist bits about how they'll use their party's control of congress to work on this sort of thing? Well, first things first. Like... hearings on steroid use in baseball leagues.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
We need the same protections for email - who emails whom should be private. As it stands, I'm not even sure the contents of emails are protected.
Perhaps I would be more impressed if the ruling said that all companies, including phone carriers, had to get customer approval before selling records via an opt-in waiver separate from their service agreement. I imagine most carriers have some sentence in the fine print saying that by taking their service you're agreeing by default to let them use your data.
Oh, wait. They do. Hence we all have to run around to every company we do business with and make phone calls, check boxes on online forms, and send postcards to opt-out of their information selling.
This was legal to begin with? Umm... Yeah.
"To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today." -Isaac Asimov
I wish I could find the article I read awhile back that explained the law around log files. Traditionally, call detail records (CDR's) were not owned by you, the customer. CDR's were/are owned by the phone company. They could use the data anyway they wanted, including selling it. There are some states (Washington?) that created laws that stated that CDR's are not owned by the phone company, but are partially owned by the customer and are therefore considered private information.
If you run a web server, who owns those log files, you or the person that connects to your server? If some officer called up asking if some IP address connected to your server, you could request a warrant for this information or just turn it over.
I don't think bars can sell records in the Europe, with or without authorization. It makes no difference whether their clients are judges or not.
Here's another one: http://www.intelius.com/phone-search-name.html
People's beliefs should NOT be respected.
No belief is ever, in any way, deserving of or entitled to "Respect"
What we ought to respect is a persons right to believe whatever they like. Their beliefs can be agreed or disagreed with, applauded or ridiculed, depending on their congruence with observed reality and, yes, your own beliefs.
There are people who believe the earth is flat, that a God has decided that women should be subservient to men, or that it's ok to have sex with children. Do you automatically respect those beliefs?
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Phone companies don't use caller ID. They use ANI, which isn't so easily spoofable (it's used to bill you, so they actually care about it being correct).
- the company giving the records, gratis, to a second company coincidentally owned by the same people, which then sells the records for profit?