Cable Company Publicly Shames, Lectures Overdue Customers On Facebook

from the punishment-in-the-public-square dept

Apparently bored by the traditional route of collection agencies and courtesy, one Canadian cable operator recently decided to try something different: it started posting the names and account balances of customers with overdue accounts on Facebook. After complaining that it "always get excuses from everybody," Senga Services in Fort Simpson, Canada started posting the notices to all manner of local community Facebook pages. Not content with that, at least one of the company's representatives thought it was a good idea to lecture locals on fiscal responsibility and living "within one's means":Not too surprisingly, locals weren't too impressed with the cable operator's new bedside manner:

"Connor Gaule, an administrator of the popular Fort Simpson Bulletin Board page, took the post down immediately. "I thought that it was kind of illegal for her to be posting the people in arrears," he said. "And there's better ways to go about it. Especially on social media, where half the people on that list are elders that don't have access to that."

...Michelle Léger, a Fort Simpson resident studying in Fort Smith, said the post "just wasn't right." "If I had been a person on that list, I would have been really embarrassed," she said. "It's publicly shaming people. That's kind of abusive to your customer base."

Except, as we all know, the cable company doesn't have to care about whether or not it's abusing its customers, because usually it's the only game in town. Senga responded by insisting that not only was the practice effective, it's legal under Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act for companies to disclose personal information without consent -- if "the disclosure of the information is necessary in order to collect a debt owed to the organization."

Not true, says the Canadian government. A few days after the original story broke, the CBC asked the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada whether Senga's behavior crossed the line, and the agency stated the law doesn't say what Senga thought it did:

" In an email response, Tobi Cohen, a senior communications adviser at the office, told CBC that Senga Services had been contacted and "the company has complied with our request to take down the post." Cohen wrote that the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act "allows organizations to use or disclose people's personal information only for the purpose for which they gave consent."

"There is also an over-arching clause that personal information may only be collected, used and disclosed for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate under the circumstances." Cohen also wrote that were an individual to make a complaint to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the office "could look at investigating further."

After a wrist slap from the Privacy Commissioner Senga has backed away from the practice, and returned to what cable companies historically do best: doing a piss poor job of providing an extremely expensive service.

Filed Under: canada, public shaming, social media
Companies: senga services

TSA Asks America To LOL At Traveler Who Had $75,000 Taken From Him By Federal Agents

from the the-4chan-of-government-agencies dept

The TSA runs a fairly entertaining Instagram account, if you're the sort of person who is impressed by pictures of weapons seized from stupid passengers. That would be the extent of its social media prowess. Its blog is pretty much a 50/50 mix of Yet Another Thing You Can't Take Onboard and Blogger Bob defending the TSA's latest gaffe.

One of the TSA's official Twitter flacks tried to loft a lighthearted "hey, look at this thing we came across!" tweet. She couldn't have picked a worse "thing" to highlight, considering the ongoing outrage over civil asset forfeiture.

For those who can't see the embed, the tweet says:

If you had $75,000, is this how you'd transport it? Just asking! TSA @ #RIC spotted this traveler's preferred method

Pictured was someone's carry-on bag, opened to expose the cash contained in it.

First: should the TSA be broadcasting the contents of someone's luggage -- especially considering the contents are a large amount of cash -- along with broadcasting the airport where it was discovered and the baggage's appearance? There may not be any recognizable privacy violations here, but it's certainly bad form. And it does no favors to the person carrying it.

Second: unless the traveler was attempting to take the money out of the country without reporting it to Customs, it's none of the TSA's business how a traveler carries money from place to place. It may be careless, but it is not illegal and it is certainly not something government agencies should spend too much time obsessing over. (But of course they will, because travelers' cash can quickly become the government's cash, thanks to civil asset forfeiture.)

Third: the TSA's public interest in this member of the public's cash is flat-out unseemly. Not only does the tweet portray the unnamed person as some sort of idiot/criminal (or both!), but it led many to the obvious assumption that this cash was seized.

But, you know, LOL #otherpeoplesmoney and all that.

The foregone conclusion that this money had been seized was (momentarily) dispelled by another tweet from the TSAmedia_Lisa account.

TSA didn't seize/confiscate/take it. It alarmed the x-ray machine as an unknown and we spotted it. It's just a curiosity

So, somehow a passenger managed to walk through airport security with a large amount of cash and managed to still be in possession of it on the DEPARTURE side of the checkpoint?

No. This is AMERICA, land of the somewhat free and home of the brave drug warrior.

A followup email to the Washington Post's Chris Ingraham proved TSAmedia_Lisa's (Farbstein) response was technically true and completely disingenuous.

Asked about the incident via e-mail, Farbstein said that "the carry-on bag of the passenger alarmed because of the large unknown bulk in his carry-on bag. When TSA officers opened the bag to determine what had caused the alarm, the money was sitting inside. Quite unusual. TSA alerted the airport police, who were investigating."

It seems the police didn't just "investigate." They worked with another federal agency to take the money:

In this case, the cash was seized by a federal agency, most likely the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to Richmond airport spokesman Troy Bell. "I don't believe the person was issued a summons or a citation," he said. "The traveler was allowed to continue on his way."

So Farbstein's claim about how it was "just a curiosity" is completely bogus. Not only was the photograph and putting it on social media a questionable invasion of privacy, but then they handed it off to another federal agency to take the money... and then the TSA clearly implied the opposite on social media once the story blew up.

It's not entirely clear which "federal agency" took the money, but a good guess is that the DEA is likely in possession of this "curiosity" now, thanks to its willingness to troll mass transportation departure points in search of "guilty" money.

Also ridiculous is the airport spokesperson noting that the traveler was allowed to "continue on his way," $75,000 lighter. As if that makes everything OK? If this money is completely unrelated to criminal activity, the government has just stolen money from one of its citizens. If it is linked to criminal activity, the traveler is probably in for a world of hurt if it belonged (or was owed) to someone else. Either way, the citizen loses, the government wins and the TSA badly mishandles another social media interaction.

So, the TSA's attempt at cheery lightheartedness did nothing more than once again expose its dark, humorless center. The tweet may as well have read "If you had $75,000, you don't have it any more! Just saying! #freemoney" One of the nation's most tone deaf agencies continues to prove it simply won't be outdone in this category. And the trickle of details confirmed what everyone was thinking the moment this picture hit the internet: that the person carrying that money was last in possession of it shortly before the photo was taken. The government gets its man money and the TSA delivers the news as a punchline at the expense [pretty much literally] of some random traveler whose misfortune is the government's gain.

Filed Under: asset seizure, cash, dea, public shaming, tsa

YouTube Quietly, But Publicly, Shaming ISPs That Make Your Video Streams Stutter

from the good-for-them dept

For years, people have wondered if one of the best tools to prevent ISPs from behaving too badly in breaking net neutrality would just be public shaming. Netflix has long released data on ISP performance, and then got into some hot water last month when it started directly blaming ISPs for network congestion, leading Verizon to send a cease-and-desist letter. Quartz is reporting that YouTube has been doing something similar, though it's not quite as in-your-face as the Netflix example. If the connection is weak, YouTube displays a blue bar beneath the video, with the words "Experiencing Interruptions?" in white: Click on the "Find out why" link and you get taken to Google's "Video Quality Report" which tells you some information about your ISP and how congested the network is (or, at least sometimes -- in my case, it tells me it doesn't have enough information about my provider, which happens to be Sonic.net, to determine any results).

Of course, all the public shaming in the world isn't going to matter much if ISPs are free to clog up interconnection points and you have no real competition to go to.

Filed Under: congested networks, isps, net neutrality, public shaming, youtube
Companies: google, youtube

Jonathan Coulton Publicly Shames Fox For Copying His Arrangement In Glee

from the social-mores dept

We've talked about Jonathan Coulton and his embrace of the internet and new business models plenty on Techdirt -- as well as his nuanced arguments concerning copyright infringement. He's not "pro-piracy," but recognizes that the overall growth of the internet that has resulted in more infringement has also created tremendously valuable tools and services that made his music career possible. Thus, recognizing that the two things go hand in hand, he notes that it's better in the long run. So what does he do when someone infringes on his rights? Well, he goes public.

As some have noted, Coulton has called out Fox for apparently copying his arrangement of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" in the TV show Glee. You can see his version here: And then there's the Glee version, which is quite similar, and includes a few of Coulton's own additions: Yes, his is a cover song, but he introduced some variations that appear to be directly copied in Glee. Is there a potential copyright claim here? Well, that depends -- and the copyright law here is complex. You can cover a song by paying compulsory license fees, and Fox likely did that to whoever holds the copyright on the original. But they copied specific changes (and possibly the music) that Coulton added, which could potentially be covered by his own copyright (of course, whether or not he registered them could also impact what he could do about it). And let's not even get into the issue of things like sync licenses for video, and the (still open) question of whether or not Glee actually used part of Coulton's own recording.

In the end, though, almost none of that probably matters. Because Coulton seems unlikely (we hope) to go legal here. Instead, he's just going with the public shame route -- with a simple tweet about the situation, which has set off "the internet" to help him make his case and embarrass Fox and Glee.

Internet sleuths immediately went to work on the question, creating side-by-side comparisons of the audio (which are very convincing) and even unearthing an official Fox version of the as-yet-unreleased single in the Swedish iTunes store. While the track is not currently available in the American store, gaming blog Kotaku claims that it “was available earlier and was pulled by Fox.” Despite calls from Twitter and multiple media organizations, the network has yet to make a statement as of this afternoon, but, all things considered, it’s looking pretty bad for Glee.

Of course, as a public storm of support rises behind Coulton, it seems likely that Fox/Glee producers will step up, apologize and probably cut Coulton a check of some sort. All of that seems a lot more efficient -- and it didn't require copyright law at all. Just a bit of public shaming for a bad actor. Of course, just imagine if the situation had been reversed, and Coulton was caught making use of a News Corp.-owned song. In that case, you'd have to imagine that the cease and desist letters and lawyers would have popped up quite quickly....

Filed Under: copying, cover songs, glee, jonathan coulton, licenses, permission, public shaming
Companies: fox