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| In The "Duh" Department (Online Privacy) in forum [Market-Ticker]
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Mdm
Posts: 332
Incept: 2010-10-13
South Florida
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The only hope here is that more of these rulings will wake people up to the fact that when you post something on the internet, expect the entire world to be able to see it. The only way to control what happens with internet content is if you post it to a server that is both owned and controlled by you and take precautions to prevent unauthorized access. But doing so would defeat the purpose of most people's reasons for posting something on the internet - to share it with others in a simple, convenient way.
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Genesis
Posts: 130662
Incept: 2007-06-26
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Well yeah -- what you do in public is public. Duh.
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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb. What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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Poodlelover
Posts: 143
Incept: 2012-02-02
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Agree with the sentiment. It's why I have nothing on facebook other than sarcastic nonsense; no personal information on it at all that could be held/used against me (primarily as a marketing victim, I realize).
I expect no protection of any data I have online including personal emails. I think the one exception I'd expect (maybe wrongly) is with an online backup service I pay for. I do indeed see that data as mine. Nonetheless, if I were into nefarious activities it would all be encrypted.
The lesson posted in Karl's article to the "victim" of this privacy invasion is one more and more people are going to learn as they find that all the crap on facebook and twitter (like calls to kill Zimmerman, or pictures of them getting drunk five nights/week) are all there for eternity and will eventually be indexed by ever-smartening search software. We ain't seen nothin' yet.
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Widgeon
Posts: 13481
Incept: 2007-08-30
Region formerly known as the United States
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I consider myself to be a ridiculous privacy advocate ... but, I see no problem here.
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Mrbill
Posts: 7840
Incept: 2008-10-19
North Carolina
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A secret isn't a secret once you tell somebody.
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Irritatedcitizen
Posts: 72
Incept: 2011-05-20
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The incorrect assumption which is nonetheless held by the vast majority of the public boils down to: "But I have privacy settings, right? So what I put up there is private!"Unsurprisingly this is not the case.
In Twitter's case, it is fairly obviously a public forum. Hiding behind a pseudonym is nothing more than illusory cover, but apparently it's enough to fool J6P.
However, Facebook is a bit more malicious in this regard. They started restricted to a specific college, with no inter-networking, and built slowly up from there. Since people build their own "social networks" from the ground up with fairly granular privacy controls, the illusion of privacy is maintained. There is no doubt it is illusory, however, Facebook and other such networks go to great pains to maintain this illusion that has no basis in the reality of what they do with your data (or what they may be required to do, legally).
It's all wool pulled over the eyes of the public.
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Widgeon
Posts: 13481
Incept: 2007-08-30
Region formerly known as the United States
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I wonder exactly how many of today's HS and college students are going to loose their jobs (or job opportunity) 5-10 years in the future for stuff they've posted to the net today?
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Abn0rmal
Posts: 9261
Incept: 2009-01-10
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Widgeon wrote..I wonder exactly how many of today's HS and college students are going to loose their jobs (or job opportunity) 5-10 years in the future for stuff they've posted to the net today? Maybe a few will but the stigma will fade once the generation of people who grew up doing that kind of thing replaces the prior generations.
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Risingcream
Posts: 4406
Incept: 2007-09-07
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What if you post stuff using a fictional persona and copyright it.
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Civilization...ancient and wicked. --Subotai
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success”
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Mrbill
Posts: 7840
Incept: 2008-10-19
North Carolina
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Most websites require you give them license to copy your copyrighted work as a part of submitting it to those sites.
Besides, copyright doesn't stop a subpoena or an investigation.
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Rick
Posts: 3
Incept: 2009-07-30
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But discovery in a lawsuit or criminal action is specifically authorized by the court. A court can also authorize invasion of a home or search of a person, but it must be authorized ahead of time (subject to a few exceptions). Here it seems the court is saying that court-authorization is not required, i.e. the search and seizure protections do not apply. How would access to one's twitter account differ from a wire-tap? One doesn't reside in the phone lines or at the central office switches.
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Genesis
Posts: 130662
Incept: 2007-06-26
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Rick, there was an active investigation.
My read of this is that process was served, Twitter complied, and the target filed to either suppress or block release. The judge ruled he had no privilege available to him to do so.
This is what I would expect in such a case and is consistent with what I've seen in the past when I ran a company and we were served with various and similar demands by both civil and criminal investigating agencies.
We got 'em, we complied. If the person targeted wants to go to court and try to block it they can, but they usually try and fail (as happened here.)
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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb. What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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Michelj
Posts: 26
Incept: 2009-12-02
Netherlands
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People have no idea how much and what data is collected -> and derived <- by businesses like twitter, facebook, cloud etc and google!! It's what those businesses are about. This is stuff people should learn at school. Want to be private? Keep your stuff at home, on your own machines. And I mean your OWN machines, not paid for but someone else controls it, you know what I mean. Sounds tin hat dramatic but I'm talking about freedom here.
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Westcoaster
Posts: 7
Incept: 2010-06-11
Danville, CA
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From the Twitter Terms of Service that a user agrees to when they sign up:
"We also reserve the right to access, read, preserve, and disclose any information as we reasonably believe is necessary to (i) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request,"
Pretty much says it all.
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Bubbazanetti
Posts: 539
Incept: 2007-08-23
NOLA
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I dropped my facebook account because it was a waste of time. Same with twitter.
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Phxkevin
Posts: 353
Incept: 2010-06-25
Phoenix Arizona
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In principal, I don't agree that the content that you put on a site is a business record, particularly when you look at Google or Facebook. However, I recognize that anything online, even if you have an expectation of privacy isn't private.
Its sort of like putting stuff on dropbox, you expect it to be private, but its not.
The only way to use the cloud is to encrypt it, and that will only protect against those who can't break the encryption. Remember that you cannot be compelled to give up your password, as long as its not written down somewhere (5th amendment, but the circuit courts are split)
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Congress persons are all the same, republican or democrat, conservative or liberal. They talk a good game, but the results (or lack thereof) show something different.
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Genesis
Posts: 130662
Incept: 2007-06-26
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It's not the CONTENT at issue here. Tweets are PUBLIC.
The issue is the BUSINESS INFORMATION (e.g. the IP addresses you used, timestamps, etc.) Those are business records and under long-standing (very, very long-standing!) precedent are discoverable by ordinary legal process.
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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb. What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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Joejohns
Posts: 694
Incept: 2010-09-09
Banned
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Nowadaze the "person" will not know what or who is doing the collecting and the business doing the "handover" will be under a gag order anyway.
The useless agreements that are waiving your rights are window dressing.
a farce.
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Londoncat
Posts: 29
Incept: 2012-03-02
Kansas
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At at former large wireless company for which I was employed, we had a very large division (no idea how many employees, but it was a three story building on the campus) whose sole responsibility was complying with subpoena requests. 10's of thousands every month. Unless the other side objected (I suspect the vast majority of the requests were from law enforcement for investigations - so the other side was unaware of the initial data request), we almost always complied.
Same holds true even with your utility usage. I also see plenty of requests from utilities to establish residency or power usage (evidence of a "grow house" perhaps - or just to prove that the residence was occupied during a certain time frame).
As for utilities going to "smart meters" - while the utility company will tell you that they are not "tracking" you for any purpose other than monthly power consumption - I did happen to notice a little clause in the federal grant money for the "smart meter project" that the federal government is entitled to review any and all customer data associated with the project. So while the utility may have no need/use for the data other than for billing purposes, big brother certain has a right to see all of it - on a personal level. Not that this should be a surprise, as all federal grant money comes with strings attached - and such terms are usually non-negotiable . . . and sometimes those "strings" can turn into piano wire - Sopranos style.
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Genesis
Posts: 130662
Incept: 2007-06-26
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Yep London.
We used to get them all the time at MCSNet. I didn't need a separate division to deal with them, but it was utterly routine and nobody thought anything odd of it when a process server or uniformed dink from one agency or another walked in the door of the office with process.
I enjoyed it, to be honest, as there's a statutory fee you're allowed to collect for compliance, and we billed it at full-bore every time. As our systems were very efficient and it required only a few keystrokes (and loading the paper into the printer or whatever for the output media) to provide whatever they wanted, along with a boilerplate affidavit for my signature attesting that the records were true and complete we certainly did not lose money on it.
The government wants to engage me in a profit-making enterprise? Cool! If the target wanted to object that was cool too -- they were free to do so and when we could notify them we did, but I don't recall anyone ever filing to block the discovery request.
The best ones were from US Customs. Unknown to many Customs is usually the agency that's looking into kiddie porn across state or national boundaries. If you get one of those it's odds-on they think the target is involved in the creation or transport of some very sick material and are looking to lock 'em up for a very, very long time. They're usually right on those too.
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I don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- Me Bank (n): See scam, fraud and theft. Eat a bankster -- they're low-carb. What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
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