Wireless Industry Association Opposes Bill That Would Require Warrant For Them To Turn Data Over To Law Enforcement
from the do-they-not-care-about-their-users? dept
You would think that it would be in the mobile operators' best interest to protect their own customers' privacy and to stand up for their basic rights. You would think, but apparently you'd be wrong. It appears that CTIA -- the mobile operators' industry association -- is opposing an effort in California to require mobile operators to require a warrant before disclosing personal info. The bill also requires some basic reporting requirements for the companies, having them say how often info has been disclosed (hardly onerous info to track). Basically, the law asks that the mobile operators respect the 4th Amendment when dealing with law enforcement -- something that the federal government has been successfully chipping away at for years.But the CTIA is against all of this (pdf), claiming that it would be "confusing" for mobile operators.
... the wireless industry opposes SB 1434 as it could create greater confusion for wireless providers when responding to legitimate law enforcement requestsThe crux of the "confusion" apparently is that the definitions in the bill are somewhat broader than what the industry says is standard, and they're afraid that this means "It could place providers in the position of requiring warrants for all law enforcement requests." I'm struggling to see what the problem is here. What's wrong with requiring warrants?
The letter also fails to explain why the reporting requirements would be so "burdensome," other than the claim that providers already "are working day and night to assist law enforcement to ensure the public’s safety and to save lives." So, if I read this right, they're arguing that they're already so busy responding to law enforcement that telling users that your personal data is being handed over to the government willy nilly is, you know, too much effort.
The ACLU is calling out the industry for this move -- noting that it seems to have no problem spending all these resources passing on all of our info -- why can't it spend a little defending its subscribers' rights too?
California is supposed to vote on this bill shortly. Hopefully, the state sees through these baseless claims from CTIA.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, aclu, california, ctia, warrants
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More to the story...
Of course, ALEC has been taking a lot of flak for the Stand Your Ground laws as well as even IRS proceedings from the fact that they have been lobbying Congress for over 40 years with legislation meant to benefit companies such as AT&T, Walmart, or CTIA regardless of what the public wants.
Sure, we can criticize CTIA here and put their feet to the fire. But with a company such as ALEC in the picture, I would look at who is being funded by these two groups to kill this legislation. It would not surprise me that you'll see money being given to oppose this legislation and give those funded talking points that closely align with CTIA's agenda here. And in the middle of it, ALEC would have set up the meeting between CTIA lobbyists and politicians to pass a bill to kill this legislation.
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Re: More to the story...
These "Stand Your Ground and Kill a Black Guy" laws are just the most well-known of ALEC's ugly agenda. They're also behind the "Evolution is Just a Theory" changes to school curricula and "Global Warming isn't Real" school board changes. ALEC will even support extreme right-wing school board candidates, creating the first instances of SuperPAC involvement in local school board elections.
These are really, really bad guys. They do not have our best interests at heart. It's good news that the Trayvon Martin case brought them out into the sunlight and has gotten a lot of very big corporations to back out of supporting ALEC.
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1) They've done a ton of damage with the SYG laws.
2) The work to undo their damage is far from over.
The SYG is already on the books in over 30 different states through heavy funding of Republicans to pass these laws. That's one of the myriad reasons why Scott Walker is so vilified in Wisconsin. He takes money from teachers in order to give to crony capitalism.
This does not change how the law has been very devastating against people who are victims to this bought legislation. ALEC's legislation disparages against human life with Voter ID laws (discriminate against the poor and middle class), extreme gun laws (Trayvon Martin) and even lobbying on corporate businesses (AT&T is their largest constituent along with Wal-Mart).
So the fact is, we need to expose CTIA and ALEC. They are going to act in their own interest and that works against the public good.
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Price Wars
They might suffer a slowdown on the amount of money they make from charging law-enforcement for your information.
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Re: Price Wars
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Re: Price Wars
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The reason is liability
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Reporting Requirements
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They probably don't want to put their employees in a position where the employee requires a warrant according to the law as he understands it, but the employee is incorrect that ends creating an obstruction charge.
Of course, you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but that's probably the reason.
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Response to: Jon B. on Apr 23rd, 2012 @ 2:55pm
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nope.
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Of course ...
The would prefer blanket immunity like the telco's have.
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Its the same old "confusion"
http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/aclu-police-track-cellphones-too-6 25114
Once again, money trumps responsibility...
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I don't think law enforcement should be requesting any old information they want, but where its life and death, a warrent shouldn't be required. The real question is how you judge this. I'm not sure what the right answer is.
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"He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither."
So yes it sucks that bad things CAN happen, but if we allow our freedoms to be slowly chipped away, bad things WILL happen.
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In reality I believe he was saying 'We can't have unlimited freedom, but lets not give up more than we reasonably need to'. Is this exchanging some freedom for some saftey? Yes. But its still more freedom than the current free for all system and a reasonable amount of saftey gained. It feels 'reasonable' to me.
As to chipping away at freedom, I couldn't agree more, I think its actually worse here in the UK than in the states. But we protect ourselves from this by being vigilant and making intelligent desisions based on the situation. A blanket 'No more restrictions on freedom' could be as harmful as a blanket 'the government can do what it wants'. After all, no new laws could ever be passed.
We live in a democracy, and like the system itself, freedom in a democracy is about balance, not extremes, whichever way they swing.
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I pulled out the Franklin quote as an easy way of making this point.
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It goes both ways
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Re: It goes both ways
Hell, Sprint has a $5/month service where you can ping a phone and get it's GPS coordinates anytime it's on and connected to the network.
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Change?
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I'm not sure however that you need to include ALEC in the discussion to understand the wireless carriers' motivations. The fact that Verizon has contributed to ALEC doesn't necesarily mean that ALEC is behind this.
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At the end of the day...
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Alec Distractors
http://rebelpundit.com/2012/04/federal-tax-dollars-indirectly-fund-organization-leading-ass ault-on-alec/
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