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Does A Company Deserve the Same Privacy Rights As You?
An anonymous reader writes "The Supreme Court has agreed to hear an important case to determine whether or not AT&T deserves 'personal privacy' rights. The company claimed that the FCC should not be allowed to distribute (under a Freedom of Information Act request) data it had collected concerning possible fraud and overbilling related to the e-rate program. The FCC argued that the information should be made public and that companies had no individual right to 'personal privacy,' the way individuals do. As it stands right now, the appeals court found that companies like AT&T do deserve personal privacy rights, and now the Supreme Court will take up that question as well. Given the results of earlier 'corporation rights' cases, such as Citizens United, at some point you wonder if the Supreme Court will also give companies the right to vote directly."
Rights exist or don't exist. Once you start to use the term "Do X deserve the right to Y?" you have already lost.
I say even then, no. The reason we protect the privacy of individuals is because we recognize a need for human dignity, and that people have a right to private lives outside of the public sphere. Businesses, however, are public entities. They don't have "private lives". They don't go home to wives and children at the end of the day.
Take any random citizen - let's just say me, for example. Since AT&T is a publicly traded corporation, I can, at will, by shares in the ownership of AT&T. Since I have partial ownership, I should be able to see whatever non-confidential information of theirs that I want (by confidential, I mean stuff like credit card numbers, anything under a client-lawyer protection, etc.). Since anybody at all can buy shares, I'd say it would be far easier to make the publicly-traded company's information publicly available. At MINIMUM, the shareholders should get it. They own the corporation, after all.
No, there is no "-1 I'LL NEVER ADMIT BEING WRONG!!!" mod.
Recently on August 23rd this year, UNITED STATES v. HAVELOCK concluded that mailing threatening communications in violation of 18 U.S.C. 876(c), which makes it a felony to mail a communication addressed to any other person, does not apply to companies and corporations like news organizations. So since they are not persons, they should not be bound by personal privacy laws.
"My friends, if the courts start granting rights to legal fictions, then what's to keep them from granting rights to fictional characters? Should you have the right to marry Harry Potter? Why not grant privacy rights to ghosts, or robots, or horses, or zombies? If a fictional zombie is on your property, breaking into your house, going to eat your wife, your daughter, your grandma, and you've got a loaded shotgun in your hands, do you want to have to stop and worry about its rights? How about video game characters? Should Duke Nukem have to worry about being sued by the mutants he's gunning down? I mean, where does it end? The time is 5:28..."
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
why does no one call for a constitutional amendment to REVERSE corporate personhood? It is probably one of the most important constitutional issues of our time and no one talks about it.
Most of us (definitely me) aren't familiar enough with such issues to know that is the right way to solve the problem. If we force the issue, make a campaign to say corporations are not people, and they defeat it, won't that be used as further indication that they are in fact people?
That and I think few people realize what's happened in the first place. If you ask people on the street about it, I think pretty much all of them would stare at you as if you were talking about trees having the right to free speech.