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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."
If this comes to pass, then corporations will soon have more rights than people do. I'd expect to see a whole lot of real estate transactions in Delaware, and a lot more corporations being set up as people incorporate themselves to enjoy everything the government has been doing for corporations lately.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
When it can die like I can. When it can be taken off the streets indefinitely for doing harm to other people, the way I can.
Same goes for free speech in my opinion.
As a public company, this is clearly material information that needs to be disclosed to all shareholders (current and potential). Once you start trading stock, your corporate right to privacy pretty much disappears, at least where possible criminal activity is concerned.
Rights exist or don't exist. Once you start to use the term "Do X deserve the right to Y?" you have already lost.
And this is different from any individual buying any of this how? I'm pretty sure Bill Gates (or, if you prefer, Steve Forbes) can buy elections on his own just as well as most corporations can.
Rights do not disappear because you associate with someone, or because you have more money than them. Rush Limbaugh has just as much right to free speech as I do, despite the fact that he influences a great many more people.
Keep in mind that the New York Times is a corporation. So is every other news organization. Why should only "news" organizations be allowed political free speech?
A corporation is nothing more than a specific legal organization of individuals. Corporations do not have rights, but the individuals organized in them do not lose their rights just because they organized.
I have no problem with a few friends starting an organization with a goal of promoting political views, yet I dislike the Citizens United decision. The amount of money now being spent on political causes undermines the very notion of democracy, and after Citizens United, will only get worse. The problem is that we're not just talking about "a few friends" -- we're talking about "hundreds of millions of dollars". We're talking about money being able to buy elections via controlling the media with cold, hard cash.
The way I see it, if we sit back and allow multi-billion dollar corporations control our elections, we might as well pack it in.
Go ahead, trumpet your free speech rights all you want -- as an insignificant slave to our corporate masters, what good does your free speech do? Do you think anyone will listen to you when the media is dominated by organizations outspending you by a factor of a thousand to one?
We need to remove the need for astounding amounts of money from the political process. This is the only way we can restore some form of democracy.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
A decent-sized corporation at the least is equivalent to a public figure. So right there, they'd have a lower expectation of privacy than I would have as a private, nearly anonymous person. Second, I think it's already established that a regulated business which deals with the public has a lower expectation of privacy than a private person.
Consider this. Suppose I personally were doing the business that AT&T was doing. Namely, my superdooper transhumanist implants or whatever allowed me to do the business of a few hundred thousand member corporation. Do I have an expectation of privacy that allows me to deep six an FCC report directly pertaining to my activities that I might find unfavorable to me? To be blunt, I don't think so. In other words, even if we grant a corporation the same privacy rights as a person, I don't see that a person would have an expectation of privacy in this circumstance.
Do corporations accept personal responsibility?
No...?
So how can they possibly demand personal privacy?
Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander.
No sig today...
I'll tell you what undermines the country: simply deciding that you don't like something, and so the rule of law can go to hell.
I suppose you'd say I were just as free if the government specified that I was only allowed to criticize the government in falsetto, wearing a tutu, and addressing a potted plant.
The concept of rights isn't about what a person can and can't do, it's about limiting the power of government. Freedom of speech is a right. It's implementation in the first amendment is important. The first five words of the first amendment are "Congress shall pass no law". This is an important distinction from "People have the right to" or "People can say whatever they want". "none shall pass", it doesn't matter if it's a flesh wound or a mortal wound, Congress can't make restrictions. Whether people have rights that companies do not is moot. It's whether the government can or can't restrict certain activities.
Some refer to the equal protection clause under these types of situations, but the notion of equality is only relevant if the two entities being compared are effectively equivalent. The notion that companies are equivalent to people is absurd. If companies are equivalent to people, how do you count votes for a company, and in what districts?
A "Company" already is awarded benefits that are grotesquely wrong. One of my main complaints is that the law views a "Corporation" as a single entity, and in this course physical individuals are legally shielded from direct complaints. Only in the most extreme scenerio, oft brought to light by other equally powerful entities, can an individual or board room member be personally charged with a crime.
So I think Companies, Corporations are granted free reign on any tyrannical act they deem profitable. This is already far too much in my opinion.
Now, on to the issue brought up, under my premise that they already get away with murder, my main disagreement with the idea that they should be awarded personal Rights stems from another argument the have to circumvent immediate democratic measures; in other words, they argue that since they employ people that they inherently represent their views regardless under the assumption what's good for the company in turn is good for it's employees and thus surrounding society. This rationale is so flawed, one could write a book on how it's incorrect even without touching on giving jobs to foreigners or off-shore employees.
The above argument basically boils down to public representation. If you are representing the interests of the public, then you should abide by rules, regulations and scrutiny of the public. Period, no other way around it, no argument suffices to contradict this demand. Companies can't have both to choose from whenever the situation best suits them. When they indirectly cause a famine in Africa.... they are a single entity and those involved aren't directly charged and convicted. When the government comes for them, then they want to hide behind Personal Rights as granted to individuals... all the while, they also have to abide by business laws, and international legislation....
No, AT&T does not deserve explicit rights granted to Individual Citizens. They do not deserve the rights they already have.
Freedom of the press is outlined separately in the first amendment from freedom of speech. Maybe there was a reason for that. Wouldn't freedom of speech alone be sufficient if all corporations (news papers included) had the same freedom of speech as other citizens?
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
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.
Corporations do not have rights, but the individuals organized in them do not lose their rights just because they organized.
I heartily agree with this, and firmly disagree with the Citizens United ruling. Before Citizens United you lost no rights by incorporating. None. ZERO Every person in the country was free to say anything he wanted, and donate as much as he wanted. You could even organize with your friends and speak as a group.
What you couldn't do was incorporate and use that corporation as a political tool. See, corporations are an artificial construct. The government is under no obligation to recognize the existence of corporations. They could abolish the concept of the corporation entirely, and that would have no affect on your free speech rights. Since the corporation is a construct created entirely by the government, they get to define the scope of that construct.
So you see, limits on corporations have nothing to do with your personal rights to free speech and free assembly. You had exactly the same amount of free speech rights before Citizen's United as you would have in the absence of corporations. Anything the government chooses to facilitate with corporations is a bonus above and beyond your natural rights.
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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.
Rights are not privileges. Privileges might be deserved or not. Rights are not "deserved": they are an inalienable feature of a person. Whatever the "creator" is, the creator of actual people that endowed people with inalienable rights is not a person (nor a government), and does not create corporations. People and governments create corporations, which do not have inalienable anything. Corporations are put together and made, and they can be separated from anything that makes them. They have no rights, only privileges actually assigned to the people who are the executives of the corporation.
The entire notion that a corporation is a person is a legal fraud originally perpetrated as a scam by a railroad monopoly. It's only though relentless corporate interference with the law in the US that corporations are treated as "persons" in any way. This fundamental injustice is the deepest flaw in our current democratic republic, and the source of the majority of our hardest to solve problems.
As for privacy, the US government already fails to protect the privacy of actual people according to the enumeration in the Fourth Amendment: "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects". Somehow Supreme Court justices can read that specification and not recognize the right to privacy it not only recognizes, but actually enumerates. To protect the privacy of corporations as a matter of "right" would pervert the fundamental basis of the US government beyond any ability to take it seriously except as a public office of private corporate power.
--
make install -not war
"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!
AT&T wants personal privacy rights? The guys who oh-so-helpfully set up special rooms for the NSA to intercept data traffic, thus violating the personal privacy rights of everyone using their network? That AT&T? Pay attention, Ms. Morissette, for THAT is ironic.
The employees *inside* the corporation have the right to vote, speak, hire lobbyists, et cetera but the corporation itself has no more rights than a building.
The participants in a corporation are shielded for the most part from personal liability. That's the secret sauce that makes corporations so desirable; the people who form a company can pool their money and the entity is held responsible for the activities they collectively engage in, rather than the individuals involved. This is a great incentive for generating entrepreneurial activity, but it also means that the corporation has a legal life of its own, separate from even the founding individuals, much less people who were brought aboard long after the founders died.
The people inside the corporation spend money on lobbyists, PR campaigns, PACs, and so on, but they are merely the servants of the corporation. When Altria spends millions on local, state, and federal elections every year, it's not because J. Worthington Snipe, the guy who runs their Dirty Tricks Division, is exercising his rights as an individual. It's because Altria is taking advantage of its legal right to free speech, as defined by a series of Supreme Court decisions that completely ignore the fact that voting rights only matter if they are not completely overpowered by the 1st Amendment rights of goliath corporations.
The fact that corporations are legal fictions in no way diminishes the fact that they have been given many rights we would otherwise associate only with human beings.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
There is no notion of collective rights in the constitution, only individual rights. Corporations (and LLCs) are state sponsored entities where businesses give up some of their rights in exchange for limited liability. By granting them the same rights as people, while still granting them limited liability, they're elevating corporations above individuals.
Now if you're talking about a proprietorship or a partnership, then yes they should have privacy rights as their liability is the same as yours or mine.
If AT&T doesn't want to play by the rules, then they should have their corporate charter revoked. Otherwise just shut up and enjoy your dance with the devil.
But corporations *ARE* people in the eyes of law. Even though it wasn't a precedent that was argued in a case (it was a footnote in a case added by a clerk, actually) it is accepted by the courts as precedent, which is what the recent election law ruling saying corporations can spend unlimited money was all about.
Knownothings call for constitutional amendments for stuff like taking away gay rights all the time... 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.
And we talk about "strict consitutionists..." When you do the research, there is plenty of evidence that the framers of the constitution did not believe in corporate rights in ANY way. They were VERY sceptical of corporate rights because of their dealings with the East India Company.
We are living through the looking glass when it comes to these issues today. Watch how this goes... people that are for corps. spending as much money as they want in elections say it makes things transparent... but give corporations privacy rights and all of a sudden they can spend all they want on any candidates and don't have disclose what they spend to anyone... and the corporations get even more rights!
There is no way it should have any privacy... Its business practices should be part of public record...
Even if it wasn't publicly traded... That information should be released to the public.. There is no accountability for bad business practices the people that gave it the thumbs up and let it go on.. Should be fired with no bonuses or golden parachutes.. They should be jail since they knowing defrauded people of money.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
A corporation is not a natural person, it is a fictitious entity, and so by definition has no privacy to protect. Each individual can protect their individual privacy. The individuals can band together into an association and protect their freedom of association (to some degree).
A corporation has trade secrets, which it protects as a proxy for the interests of the shareholders. There is already legislation and case law protecting trade secrets. A court should not confuse trade secrets with personal privacy.
Luke, help me take this mask off
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.