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Supreme Court Rules On Corporate Privacy
heptapod writes "The Supreme Court unanimously decided (PDF) Monday that AT&T can't keep embarrassing corporate information that it submits to the government out of public view; 'personal privacy' rights do not apply to corporations. 'We trust that AT&T will not take it personally,' concluded the ruling."
we still have quite a few other personal rights that have been given to corporations that shouldn't have
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
About frakking time. Corporations should have no more access to human rights than a tree or rock or building. If an entity can not vote, then it should not have rights.
Privileges like trademarks and advertising? Sure. But such privileges should be strictly regulated and limited (unlike individual speech rights which should be unlimited).
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
First off: "We trust that AT&T will not take it personally"
Hahahaha! That's like a big middle finger stuck right into the ruling. Nice!
Now that I got that out of my system...the whole corporate personhood thing is such a farce anyway. A corporation is nothing but a group of people. It could be one person or 100,000 people. But if you remove all the people from the corporation, can it make a decision? Can it sign a piece of paper? Can it continue to function at all? NO.
What's worse: the idea that people do things "on behalf" of corporations. Such as the fallacy that a corporation is to blame and not the person who does the wrong thing and rationalizes "I'm not a sociopath because I decided to pollute that river with toxic waste then obstruct justice during the investigation by shredding all those documents on behalf of the corporation."
Corporations don't commit crimes. People do. Maybe it's "on behalf of" the corporation. But it's always a person doing the deed.
Again, a corporation is its people. It's not its own person.
If corporations were individuals they would be sociopaths as this 2003 Canadian documentary endeavors to show. In D&D they would be considered either lawful evil or chaotic evil (depending on the corporation). They are narrowly selfish and greedy to such an extent that as an individual they would almost certainly be criminals. Profit trumps every other concern without exception. So corporations are an evil institution, but are they a necessary evil? The price we pay for economic prosperity. Perhaps, but that doesn't mean we have to give them any more power than necessary to get what we (as a society) want from them (inexpensive, innovative, useful products).
I consider myself a Libertarian, but I would argue that even in a free society corporations-as-individuals should be prohibited. It simply does not make sense to grant them the same rights as an individual not only because they clearly are a group of individuals, but because corporations need to have limitations on their power and on their predictably ruthlessly selfish/evil behavior. Corporations are the only institutions that can even remotely compete with governments in terms of power and abuse of power and they should be treated warily because of this.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Folks here are already saying things about this ruling diminishing the "person" aspect of corporations. The ruling doesn't really do that. Instead, it rests on a question of statutory construction. In particular, the court says that "personal privacy", a phrase used in FOIA, does not merely mean the privacy of a person, as AT&T argued, but instead refers to particular elements of privacy that only carry meaning when you're talking about an actual human being.
Wouldn't those people's rights be protected by, ya know, being people?
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
Sadly, most elected officials do not realize, that we the People, ALLOW these businesses to do business in our country.
Just like they think they lead us, when the words lead, leader and leadership, do not exist in the U.S. Constitution.
The tail shall not wag the dog. End of story. Get out and vote against these idiots! It is your DUTY as an informed
electorate.
Has a company ever been put in prison?
Wouldn't those people's rights be protected by, ya know, being people?
No. Even in the US that isn't true. If your rights have been violated by law or action, you still have to act to redress your grievance, either in the courts or through communication. What you don't get is that procedures frequently have to be implemented in order for the right to be properly honored.
For example, the Miranda warning is a judicially mandated action that was deemed necessary so that people who were arrested would aware of their rights. It doesn't follow naturally from the Constitution and didn't come about until about 45 years ago.
Similarly, corporate personhood is a legal invention. It came about precisely because the courts of the time deemed it necessary in order to honor the rights of the people making up the corporation.
No, it would be much easier as we would have to charge individuals with crimes and therefore, individuals in the company would have real personal consequences for their actions instead of having the company take the fall. It also wouldn't have to be a single person; a group of people in collusion would be just as effective.
-SaNo
There's a big difference between having some form of legal entity and personhood. The one big thing that must be brought back is actual enforcement of the requirement that a corporation be in the public interest. Breaking the law is never in the public interest, so a corporation that does so is dissolved.
I believe that is direct contributions, not total political expenditures.
Take the Koch brothers recent activity in Wisconsin. They donated $43,500 to Governer Walker's election campaing. But, they also donated $1M to the Republican Goveners association (which spent over $2M in Wisconsin) and funded another $2+ million in political activity in Wisconsin through their Americans for Prosperity PAC.
So if you look at the Koch's contribution to Walker, it doesn't seem all that significant. But if you look at their spending, it's tremendous.
True, that example is at the state level and the list you linked to is at the federal level. But I would really be surprised to find that that chart includes all investments besides direct contributions by all PAC and subsidiaries and their PACs by all of the groups listed.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
The people certainly not.
But why does the group need extra rights for itself, if all the people within it already have them?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I personaly don't see why people working together should have less rights than people working alone.
They don't. The people working at a corporation are nowhere even the subject of the discussion. The rights at stake are additional rights given to the corporation.
I personally don't see why people working together should have more rights than people working alone.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Many countries make a distinction between natural persons (i.e. humans) and a legal person (entities, corporations). I have to assume that there must be some distiction between the two in the US too, though it is smaller than elsewhere. If not, a corporation being a natural person would have a nationality, and if it is a US nationality, it would have the right to vote in elections, which is not the case.
Sure they can. For instance, if corporations are property, thanks to asset forfeiture it's possible for the government to charge property with a crime and confiscate it.
Or alternately, assume they are neither property nor persons. That means that Congress can pass whatever laws about corporations they like (since they nearly always fall under interstate commerce), and the state where the corporation is incorporated can also exercise unchecked control. Either of them could pass a law that states something like "Corporations who commit criminal offenses will be tried as criminal defendants."
One could argue whether either of those is a good or bad thing, but it's hardly a situation where they can't be charged with a crime.
I am officially gone from
Which typically amounts to a slap on the wrist.
Problem is, "the public" is not what you think it is. that does not mean you or me but "major shareholders" which is the top 1% of the population. Liability to you or me, even if we hold 1,000 shares is nothing. liability to the guy that owns 20% is there.
the public was sold a bag of goods that was rigged from the start to protect the riches of the top 1% and NOT that of the public.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You have summed up the problem pretty effectively. All the execs have to do is pass the buck and they know they can basically get away with whatever they want. And if they are caught, the harshest penalty is monetary - not even personal fines, but rather the corporation. It is like legally removing your conscience.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Don't worry. The Supreme Court will be back to their old tricks again in Al Kidd v Ashcroft. They may throw us a bone once in a while, but don't think for a second that they are on our side.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
When a company is fined, who pays the price? For public companies (most of the companies we care about), the answer is basically shareholders -- almost all of whom had no part in the wrongdoing. So the main effect is that some people in the company do something wrong, then all shareholders get fined. I think more fines should be leveled on the people who actually did the wrongdoing (although fining the company is still somewhat useful as it does provide an incentive not to break the law -- it's just that the burden of the fine is mostly misplaced).
So who do we send to jail or fine for the Toyota gas pedal problems?
Well that one is simple, the journalists whom made the whole thing up for the pageviews.
Good luck collecting your multi-million dollar award from that single assembly line worker, and enjoy destroying his life in revenge for the damage (most likely accidental) that "he alone" caused you.
The aviation industry solved that by always blaming the pilot, whom coincidentally was dead. An unintended consequence would be the auto industry increasing their lethality so the driver always ends up dead, thus can take the blame.
Metalworking shops etc already carry hefty liability insurance. The social engineers in congress would have an interesting problem, as thats currently paid pre-tax but if individual worker had to buy first of all they'd be screwed to higher prices just like health insurance and secondly they'd be paying post tax money. So it would be quite a drag on the economy as a whole, although insurance companies would make more, and special interests love to donate to politicians, so I suspect its inevitable in the future...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
What happened with CU is that previous to the case, individuals in a corporation were allowed to make political contributions to whoever they chose to (up to the personal limit, which is $2400, IIRC). In the ruling that came down, corps were then allowed to donate whatever they wanted to out of their own accounts, and essentially without limits. So, because of this (monumentally bad) ruling, corporations could essentially drown out the voices from individual contributors, by spending millions from the corporate accounts on their favorite candidates.
There's an excellent (and funny) summary of the oral arguments at Slate.
http://www.slate.com/id/2281715/
To sum it up less elegantly, the issue is the Freedom of Information Act which defines an exemption for "personal privacy". It also defines many other exemptions that apply to corporations.
The case hinged on whether artificial persons such as corporations had a right to "personal privacy". A lower court had said yes --- based more or less on an argument-by-grammar. "Personal privacy" contains the root "person", and hence all persons must have it.
The Supreme Court decision pointed out that this is not much of an argument. Flesh and blood people have "personal space" and "personal issues", but corporations probably don't. They also pointed out that the legislators had clearly written exemptions into the law that applied to corporations, and so AT&T was asking for essentially a massive extension in what the law does vs. what Congress had intended.
It gives me a small amount of confidence in this court to see them rule against a major extension of rights for corporations. Maybe it will become a trend.
Corporate personhood is not invented to protect 'natural', 'constitutional' or 'legal' rights of persons.
For one thing, the concept originates from before the US constitution. It at least dates back to the Dutch East Indies company (1608 IIRC). Separating investment from liability (other than the invested sum) is a means to allow a multitude of people to invest in a company without the risk of being taken down in a bankruptcy (for more than their invested sum). It is a pure tradeoff between the the security of the investors and the rights of creditors and has nothing to do with enforcement of pre-existing rights.
Ah, yes. Good ol' Dutch East Indies. We really should have learned from their monstrous example, realized corporate personhood is one of the single worst ideas ever, and moved back to sanity.