From Free Press’s helpful explainer of the AP phone records scandal, noting the legal background:
Smith v. Maryland — In this 1979 decision, the Supreme Court found that people have no expectation of privacy when it comes to the numbers they call because they understand it has to be transmitted through a third party (telephone company). Thus, the [Digital Media Law Project] notes, “the government can obtain that information simply by issuing a subpoena to a telephone company or other third party.”
As Mr. Bumble says, “If the law supposes that, the law is a ass—a idiot.” Everyone who wouldn’t be surprised—and displeased—to find out that your phone company was going around telling whomever was interested the details of whom you call when and how much, please raise your hand.
The inestimable Justice Thurgood Marshall said it well in his dissent to Smith v. Maryland: “But even assuming, as I do not, that individuals ‘typically know’ that a phone company monitors calls for internal reasons…it does not follow that they expect this information to be made available to the public in general or the government in particular.”
By that line of “reasoning” – and I use the term advisedly – you should expect no right to privacy regarding your health care details, as your provider is a “third party”.
Newspeak is old news, innit?
As long as we don’t own our own information others will steal it and sell it and use it. We need to be able to say that we didn’t want our information taken just to be sold and should get not only renumeration but our day in court over grand theft of our personal information.
I will say this, one step further. I know the corporation will sell the data, that is how they always worked, that is the basis for the Economy; But it does not mean I have to like it and I will take appropriate actions over it’s use if I dislike the manner in which it is being used.
You want to know something? Come ask me, I will tell you….
Always enjoy this piece of common law casuistry: if your communication requires a third party’s equipment/intervention, *assume* the contents will be disclosed to 4th, 5th, 6th, etc., to the nth party.
With that assumption “accepted,” you have no right of privacy in those communication contexts. It’s open season on *any medium* that a third party “touches.”
Yikes!
Aside from the privacy issues and concerns, I still claim all rights to the use and control of my data, including the ability to profit therefrom. Until those telecom services providers can show that I am receiving compensation as an employee, they have no rights to profit from my services, from my data.
The constitution…our elected leaders and the courts, are supposed to protect your rights.Where do you NOT see the slippery slope with that lot?
This is the problem with private corporations – and why ultimately they’re the most useful avenue to tyranny in the United States.
At least with the government, you can do a FOIA request. You can sue them under the constitution and under statute. Corporations – no such opening for transparency and sunlight exists.
I’m certain this is why we’ve seen so much of our intelligence gathering moved to contractors in private companies. It was, as I understand it, the excuse that made Iran-Contra possible for the time it was active – that our slaughter of civilians in Nicaragua was being done under “private auspices” that they imagine they could bypass the Boland Amendment. So they claimed anyway.