Corporations Now Have a Right To "Personal Privacy"

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Thanks to a recent ruling (PDF) by the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, corporations now have a right to 'personal privacy,' due to the application of a carelessly worded definition in the Freedom of Information Act. FOIA exempts disclosure of certain records, but only if it 'could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.' But in its definitions, FOIA makes the mistake of broadly defining 'person' to include legal entities, like corporations. The FCC didn't think that 'personal privacy' could apply to a corporation, so they ignored AT&T's claim that releasing data from an investigation into how AT&T was overcharging certain customers would violate the corporation's privacy. The Third Circuit thought that the FCC's actions were contrary to what the law actually says. So now the FCC has to jump through more hoops to show that releasing data on their investigation into AT&T's overcharging is 'warranted' within the meaning of 5 USC 552(b)(7)(c) before it can release anything."

Comments

Why do corporations have to be people?

[danaris]

Seriously. Can anyone with a legal background explain what part of corporate daily business requires that corporations be legally considered equivalent to people?

If there's nothing truly fundamental that requires it, I think it might be time to start writing letters to our representatives and senators asking that corporate personhood be revoked, or at least replaced with something much more watered-down. It's really starting to go too far...

Dan Aris

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[TheRealMindChild]

While this "loophole" seems bad on the surface, maybe it isn't. If corporations are considered people, perhaps we can start locking them up/shutting them down when they are breaking the law... you know... just like everyone else.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Alien Being]

"I think it might be time to start writing letters to our representatives..."

The irony is that they won't listen to you unless you send corporate lobbyists with bags of money.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[jeffasselin]

I concur. The whole corpocratic oligarchy mess stems from giving corporations rights which should be reserved for actual people. Giving "rights" to entities like corporations, but without them having the same restrictions and motivations as an actual human being (like reason, conscience, morality and guilt) is the source of the biggest issues facing us since the later 20th century: the corporations are now in control of our government, our institutions and our resources. They have all this power but no real responsibility behind it.

They care only about one thing: making the most profit for their shareholders as possible. They will do anything, including killing people and destroying the planet, to achieve this goal. They are the ultimate parasite.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Killer Orca]

While this "loophole" seems bad on the surface, maybe it isn't. If corporations are considered people, perhaps we can start locking them up/shutting them down when they are breaking the law... you know... just like everyone else.

I agree with you, but you and the mods are being a little too idealistic; that would never, ever happen.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[sjames]

So you're saying corporations are the new nobility? (not that I'm disagreeing with you). In a country that forbids the very concept of a nobility? Perhaps we should look to French history for guidance in the proper handling of nobility!

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[schon]

Entering into contracts and owning, buying and selling services and property.

Why do they need to be the equivalent of people for that?

Why not codify the law to say that corporations or people can do those things, rather than saying that corporations are people?

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Daimanta]

"Perhaps we should look to French history for guidance in the proper handling of nobility!"

With a massive reign of terror?

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[melikamp]

All successful corps use reason. Many successful people have only trace amounts of conscience, morality and guilt.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Dog-Cow]

You can "lock up" a corporation by disallowing it to do any business that results in a profit.

Not that it's necessarily a good idea.

I think the best thing to do would be to simply identify the people responsible for the actual illegal activities and kill them. Or whatever is appropriate as punishment.

The idea of a (limited liability) corporation started to protect the private assets of the corporation owners. And that's where it should have ended.

When a CEO authorizes expenditures for illegal activities, the CEO shouldn't be absolved. Instead he should be charged with theft (of corporate money) on top of the illegal activity he authorized. The idea that he should go free instead is so completely backwards that it tells you who really runs things in this country.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[DM9290]

The entire economic system is already collapsing. Or haven't you noticed?

And why would shareholders lose everything they own if the corporation fails? That's an incredibly false dichotomy. Not every failing corporation fails so spectacularly that every investor will necessarily lose everything they own simply for holding a single share. But then again, people would be more willing to trust corporations if the investors were investing their LIVES into the endevour. Investors who absolutely wanted to insure that the corporation worked legally, economically and didn't harm anyone in a way to create a liability, because if would be their own heads the sword falls on if they do wrong. Just like people.

These laws shielding investors simply spread the hurt to everyone else in the economy. Its not like the hurt vanishes. Why should innocent bistanders have to pay for the mistakes of investors?

Investors would still be willing to invest in corporations managed by people who they truly trusted as moral and legal representatives of the power that their money gives them. Business leaders would then actually deserve the title for the first time in hundreds of years. Corporations would begin to behave like true members of the community who care about others. i would still invest in some way, just not as detached from the process or the consequences.

Money is power. And with power must come responsibility or the inevitable result is power that answers to nobody and cares about nobody. You can call that prosperity if want. But it sounds more like tyranny. And that is what every corporation wants to be: a tyrant.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Dog-Cow]

Corporations do not care one whit for the shareholders. This is a gross misconception I see repeated here often.

"Corporations", this is: the Board of Directors, only cares about increasing the wealth of the Board of Directors.

Most shareholders have little or no say in what the corporation does, thanks to the invention of non-voting stock.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Rob the Bold]

Corporations are fined when they are caught breaking the law because, so far, that's all the courts can do. Please explain how anyone can "lockup" a corporation and I'll be the first support it. The whole idea of incorporating is to AVOID personal responsibility. If someone could hold the CEO, or anyone in the company, personally responsible for the actions of a corporation then the whole concept of a corporation becomes mostly useless.

Well exactly. We want to incarcerate the corporation, not the employees. Yes, corporations exist to avoid personal responsibility for the investors, and to some extent for other interested parties. That doesn't mean the corporation itself is not responsible for its actions.

So how do we incarcerate a criminal corp? Incarcerating a person means taking away their freedom of movement, their ability to hold an outside job, their ability to see friends and family at their convenience or do most voluntary activities. We'd have to find a corporate equivalent, like making the company do "prison work" at "prison pay". It could be prevented from all sorts of activities that a "free" corporation could do, like hiring, firing, making deals and purchases without court permission. Obviously these are just top-of-the-head suggestions, and the subject warrants more thought than this.

Now one could argue that this would cripple the corporation and also potentially harm the employees and shareholders, but that's the whole point. That's what happens when we lock up a person. He's not able to hold a job to support his family, potentially causing them financial distress. And his family is probably just as innocent as Joe punchclock. But we lock up natural persons even though it has an adverse effect on their family, community and friends, so one can hardly argue that corps couldn't be treated the same way. When a person commits a crime, we consider that worthy of punishment, even though punishing them may affect the innocent. It's the price of justice, I guess.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[MickyTheIdiot]

You're missing a really big item on your list (no reason, conscience, morality, and guilt)... corporations don't have the restriction of *death.* When people amass huge amounts of power at the very least they are going to die someday and that power will dissipate. Corporations are essentially immortal. Remember that scene in the Highlander when he shows his girlfriend all those priceless artifacts? It's the same idea.

Corporations should not be treated like people because they don't operate under the same constraints as people. As a matter of fact the lack of accountability that the Limited Liability Corporation structure gives individuals is a great enabler of evil. People do things behind the shield of the corporate structure they would NEVER do otherwise. We need to go back to the founding father's concept of corporations and move away to what it morphed into during the 1800s big railway era.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Rob the Bold]

So you're saying corporations are the new nobility? (not that I'm disagreeing with you). In a country that forbids the very concept of a nobility? Perhaps we should look to French history for guidance in the proper handling of nobility!

That's rather a good way of thinking about it. All the rights of commoners, plus some, and none of the responsibilities. They have ear of the government -- their concerns weigh upon the state much more than the riff-raff. If a company is threatened, it claims how its employees would suffer were it sanctioned, just as a nobleman might cite his responsibilities to his peasants. And of course, most of the money.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[interkin3tic]

With a massive reign of terror?

More specifically, terrorizing overpaid CEOs and executive boards with the guillotine.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[commodore64_love]

Here's a good place to start: AMENDMENT __: "The enumerated rights and privileges apply only to individuals." QED no more free speech, privacy, or other rights would apply to corporations. The individuals inside the corporation would still have rights, but not the corporation itself, which make it easier to regulate it, audit it, and restrain its power.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[divisionbyzero]

So basically people were lazy. Instead of explicitly enumerating the rights and responsibilities of corporations they said, "Uh, let's just treat them like people." Lame. Not surprising but still lame. We should just right an explicit list of corporate rights and responsibilities instead of relying on piecemeal case law.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Jaysyn]

That's fine. They just need to be held responsible when they break the law, in a similar fashion to natural people. If you are stupid rich & speed everywhere & just pay the tickets & thumb your nose at the law, eventually you are going to have your right to drive taken away completely regardless of how much money you have. Something similar needs to happen to corporations that constantly bend & break laws. Sometimes a fine can *never* be an appropriate punishment, especially in cases where the CEOs & Directors get paid regardless of what actually happens in the company.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Jaysyn]

Firstly, if a corporation couldn't make a profit anymore then it would "un-incorporate" and possibly a new corporation with a different name and the same people would pop up.

I don't see any reason we couldn't specifically disallow this from happening when a corporation is being punished. Make it so anyone director level or above *cannot* create or join a new corporation until their "sentence" is served. If they are on multiple company's boards they would have to either give up the position or become a silent director until the sentence is finished or commuted. Considering there are natural humans in jail right now for *life* for nothing other than possession of marijuana, I don't think this could be considered "too harsh".

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time & all that.

Re:Why do corporations have to be people?

[Rob the Bold]

Firstly, if a corporation couldn't make a profit anymore then it would "un-incorporate" and possibly a new corporation with a different name and the same people would pop up. I have heard of this happening for smaller limited-liability corporations that specialized in government bid projects and were banned from bidding. They just started over with a new name. The government, local, state or federal, is so bureaucratically constrained that this seems to work most of the time.

I've been thinking about this for a little while now. When I read the story in Wired about people disappearing and trying to start a new life (and the accompanying "find the author" contest), I got to wondering why a person who'd screwed up couldn't just "re-incorporate" themselves and move on. Apparently, it's because our identity is inextricably linked to our physical body, not just our name. If we go to jail, our body is kept there. If we try to evade out debts by changing our name, our creditors will try to track down our body and still try to collect their "pound of flesh" from it.

A corporation can get away with these things because it doesn't have a physical body. Its body is its capitalization. So "jailing" a company would mean restricting the movement of its capital, i.e. its accounts, assets, patent portfolio, land, plant, etc. Locking up a company would therefore look like "nationalizing" it. Shareholders could go right ahead and invest in a new company, but without their old capital.

This thought is a work in progress.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Hooray for lawyers and lobbiests!

[HogGeek]

"VOTE FOR SMARTER CONGRESSPEOPLE"

In order to vote for them, they need to actually run for the office...

Jury duty?

[danaris]

I consider myself reasonably smart, and I wouldn't mind serving on a jury.

Only problem is, from everything I've seen and heard, my intelligence, basic working knowledge of the legal system, inquisitive mind, and sense of justice would result in me getting removed in the first round of jury selection.

Dan Aris