ACLU Launches Privacy Lawsuit Against Yahoo! 43
testcase writes: "From the ACLU press release
'The suit, filed against Yahoo! by a user of the service's popular financial message boards, challenges the company's practice of disclosing a user's personal information to third parties without prior notice to the user. The full text of the suit is here "
Re:So just what are you supposed to do??? (Score:2)
A party may move to quash a supeona, without action needed by the recipient.
It is not a violation of a court order until an order to compell is issued by a court.
There are many cases where a company filed a lawsuit, then dropped it after getting the names.
At the very least, Yahoo should have contacted the user, with a small amount of time to respond with a copy of the motion to quash that had been entered in the court.
One Tactic To Try (Score:1)
An American problem (Score:3)
American ./ readers may be interested in this site:
http://www.knowledge-basket.co.n z/privacy/top.html [knowledge-basket.co.nz]
Re:Solution (Score:2)
Re:slashdot today (Score:1)
Click the Refresh button, or try again later. If you typed the page address in the Address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly.
Stop right there, Mister! That's a copyrighted trade secret and it is a FELONY to possess it without signing the EULA in blood and returning it in triplicate, with your immortal soul as an enclosure. You're looking at some serious time, Mister!
two cents (Score:1)
I usually agree with the ACLU's side of privacy cases, but this one is pretty borderline. Like a lot of people have said, Yahoo! did receive subpoenas. They might have been able to find a legal way to withold the information at least temporarily, but I don't think it's appropriate to demand that they do so.
The issue seems to be this:
Did Yahoo! screw up? I think so. Should they notify users when their information is given away? Yeah, or at least change their privacy policy to reflect reality.
I guess I see this as more of a contract issue than a privacy issue. The ACLU is exagerating the significance of this lawsuit.
---
Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
Re:Solution (Score:1)
:P
Re:Hoist by Their Own Petard? (Score:3)
You missed my point. Read the policy--it notifies you they will release your information when legally required, and doesn't say that they will notify you first. The ACLU says that they should--or must--notify you first, because of your right to privacy. I agree with the ACLU on this.
You'll see the same sort of language on credit-card agreements and all sorts of other consumer contracts. My understanding (IANAL and all that) is that from a legal standpoint you are considered "notified" when you receive a copy of the agreement for all situations described therein, except for those cases where the agreement provides for further notification.
This is based on my own reading of the policy and not based on any other information from Yahoo! or others. I assume you can say the same for your opinion. But consider this: if you are right, the case boils down to contract law, and thus won't set any precdence with regards to privacy. I doubt that you want that--the ACLU certainly doesn't. (And, yes, I've been a member.)
Monkey-Wrench (Score:3)
I understand that with IP addresses, etc you have less control of (unless you want to get techy and spoof) but you can certainly limit the amount of personally identifiable data you send out. I personally feel that it is important to stuff the warehouses with bunk. Increase the noise to signal ratio. Some ideas to this end:
In cases where you NEED to give personally identifiable information (i.e. ISP service, etc) why not throw in some creative spelling? Let 'em track David Smith, Daveed Smyth, and Dayvid Smeth.
Everytime you are in a store that offers one of those shopper member tracking cards (i.e. SafeWay), get one for a different person.. I've got one for Don T. Botherme and Anita Prawduct..
If you need to give out a date of birth, take the first day of the month you were born on (easy to remember)
Another thing I do.. (once tracked and marketed to) When dealing with physical junk mail, I save all the postage paid return envelopes and return the contents of the junk mail to the sender..
-
Re:Hoist by Their Own Petard? (Score:2)
Re-read your own post. The clause you quote refers to what Yahoo!'s Privacy Policy document will tell you, not what Yahoo! will or won't tell somebody else. And in fact, if you take the time to read the document itself, (it's pretty long, though more readable than most legalease) you'll see that Yahoo! says they will release personal info when requested to in a legal action. It says nothing about notifying you first.
So there you have it. They have told you "with whom your information may be shared," just as they promised. They have followed their own rules to the letter. Now, you and I may not like the policy they describe; it may not even be a legal policy--I'm sure the ACLU will assert it isn't. But the only petards being hoisted here is you and the moderators who didn't bother to read this [yahoo.com], and completely mis-construed the introductory paragraph to their policy as the policy itself.
Re:Hoist by Their Own Petard? (Score:1)
Ugh. Let me be the first to flame my own grammar. That last sentence should begin:
But the only petards being hoisted here are yours and the moderator's...
from the ACLU News mail list (news@lists.aclu.org) (Score:5)
Thursday, May 11, 2000
NEW YORK--A federal lawsuit filed today in California could establish important protections for Internet privacy and anonymity, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).
The suit, filed against Yahoo! by a user of the service's popular financial message boards, challenges the company's practice of disclosing a user's personal information to third parties without prior notice to the user.
Privacy and free speech advocates, including EPIC and the ACLU, have criticized Yahoo!'s policy on the ground that Internet users have a right to communicate anonymously and usually do so for valid reasons.
Over the past year, Yahoo! has been inundated with subpoenas issued by companies seeking the identities of individuals anonymously posting information critical of the firms and their executives.
"The right to anonymous speech should not be breached so easily," said Chris Hansen, a national ACLU lawyer who specializes in Internet speech.
Without notifying the targeted users, and without assessing the validity of the legal claims underlying the subpoenas, Yahoo! systematically discloses identifying information such as users' names, e-mail addresses and Internet protocol addresses. Yahoo! is unique among major online companies in its refusal to notify its users of such subpoenas and provide them with an opportunity to challenge the information requests.
Hansen said that the ACLU favors at least two legal protections for anonymous chatters. "Any complaint filed in court against an unknown Internet defendant should include specifics of the allegedly objectionable postings," he said.
"Also, a judge should not allow a lawyer to issue subpoenas in these cases without requiring that the Internet service provider notify the potential defendant that someone is seeking information about him and giving him an opportunity to enter court to protect his anonymity."
According to David L. Sobel, EPIC's General Counsel, "online anonymity plays a critical role in fostering free expression on the Internet, and has clearly contributed to the popularity of the medium."
"The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that anonymity is a constitutional right, but practices such as those of Yahoo! may make that right illusory online," he added.
The lawsuit was filed in United States District Court in Los Angeles by "Aquacool_2000," a pseudonymous Yahoo! user whose personal information was disclosed to AnswerThink Consulting Group, Inc., a publicly held company.
A copy of the lawsuit (in PDF) is available at:
http://www.epic.org/anonymity/aquacool_complaint.
ACLU did not launch privacy lawsuit against yahoo. (Score:1)
Re:Solution (Score:2)
Plus, you can't run ANY scripting, in order to maintain your anonymity (because there wasn't an easy way for them to protect you from malicious scripts).
They have some interesting concepts, but I'm not sold on it yet.
Re:Solution (Score:1)
The entire MS relationship is a little too much (MS only, and they seem to be running IIS).
Re:Solution (Score:1)
Re:Solution (Score:1)
Not exactly useful to most people here, I'd think. It's a great sounding concept, but too limited in scope of OS support to gain any wide spread acceptance I'd think.
wanna know how .... (Score:1)
Don't go online.
Failing that try not to give it to web sites that do not have a good privacy statement.
I don't like to give out my personal info to anybody, so I lie to a lot of the sites that ask for it.
flatrabbit,
peripheral visionary
Re:You have to wonder.... (Score:1)
What the ACLU is thinking (Score:2)
That's not how lawyers think.
Ordinary people, when faced with something like a court order, think "Gee, I'd better obey that or I'll be in contempt of court. It's illegal to ignore one of these things. I don't want to do something illegal." We have respect for the law and the courts, and by and large, we have no interest in taking every last traffic ticket, as it were, all the way to the Supreme Court, just to exercise a theoretical right to do so.
Lawyers, on the other hand, think "Gee, how long can I hold out against the court? Is there some way I can not comply with this order and get away with it? Failing that, how long can I stall them?" Lawyers have no respect for the legal system -- it merely exists to be exploited to produce the greatest personal benefit possible.
As the ACLU comprises mostly lawyers and their sympathizers, they can't help but misunderstand if a company voluntarily complies with a court order without first fighting it tooth and nail. If Yahoo! does this, the ACLU will naturally think that it is only to further some nefarious anti-privacy agenda. In my mind, it is much simpler: Yahoo! does not have anything to gain by throwing extra legal resources into guarding their users' privacy. Why should they? They never said they would. Users have never demanded it of them. Probably nobody has ever written to Yahoo! asking them to change their privacy policy to guarantee some sort of legal defense of anonymity.
It's the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. Most people think in terms of the spirit of the law; lawyers are experts in knowing the exact letter of the law, and what it does and doesn't let them get away with.
Outside the context of legal practice, people who only think in terms of personal gain, and in terms of what literal rights they have, as opposed to what can be done to help the system as a whole run smoothly -- well, there are a lot of unflattering words for such people, like "obnoxious".
P.
Re:Protecting your sources (Score:2)
While the ACLU tends to be a rabid bunch of lawyers with too much time on their hands (the Onion article about the ACLU suing the police for stopping someone from blowing up the ACLU HQ comes to mind), I'd have to go with them on this one.
1) The Onion article was satirizing the ACLU's unwavering dedication to freedom of expression, not their overlitigiousness.
2) Can you name me a SINGLE CASE brought by the ACLU that wasn't germane and noble? I get pretty defensive about this because much of my community is Baptist, and to Baptists the (ACLU==Satan). Ergo, I hear all SORTS of shit that the ACLU supposedly did that is patently and ridiculously false. So I get a little defensive.
- Rev.
ACLU ignobel award. (Score:3)
Sure. (Actually, I can describe it for you - I don't have the cite handy.)
Man had a legally-owned gun locked in the safe at his office. Crook cracks the safe and steals the gun. Later, stolen gun is used in a crime where a victim is shot and injured. Victim sues the person from whom the gun was stolen. ACLU provides the lawyers for the plantif.
(For completeness: The guy whose gun was stolen from his office safe also held a post at the NRA.)
This was the same year the ACLU defended the American NAZI Party's right to march through a Polish suburb of Chicago. (I remember that because a Jewish friend didn't renew her ACLU membership the next time it came up. The ACLU asked her if it was because of the march. Nope: She thought the NAZIs should be able to march - at least partly so she could tell who they were and so they'd come within broom range of the Polish immigrants. B-) She quit over the suit against the guy whose gun was stolen and misused.)
Subpoenas are not court orders! (Score:1)
Re:Solution (Score:1)
Re:Protecting your sources (Score:1)
No, I don't keep up with these things, so I can't name cases. But I have always been under the impression that the ACLU actually opposes freedom of expression in certain situations.
Take for example freedom of religious expression in schools. Unless I'm horribly confused, the ACLU actually takes the stand that in many cases freedom from having to listen to religious expression is more important than freedom of religious expression. Does this make sense to anyone? It doesn't to me.
And then there's those right-to-life groups. In certain cases, the ACLU has actually taken the side against freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and has supported legislation designed to force pro-life people to "keep their distance" away from abortion clinics during demonstrations. As far as I can tell, the pro-life cause is a sort of special case; the ACLU seems to hold pretty much the opposite viewpoint on, say, union workers on strike demonstrating at the plant.
Maybe someone else can make sense of it, but to me this all looks like defending the rights only of those causes that do not politically offend you -- and actually attacking those that do. Is that really what the ACLU is about? Someone please set me straight if I have my facts wrong!
Re:Solution (Score:1)
They've hired a mac guy.
Their job openings include "open source project manager"
http://jobs.zeroknowledge.com/jobs/jobdesc.html
you do the math.
Don't court orders exist in NZ? (Score:1)
I'm sure even in NZ a court can order that this information be turned over. It would be idiotic for this provision not to exist.
By the same token it is illegal for the police to enter your house without your consent - yet a judge can give them permission to do this very thing.
Re:ACLU ignobel award. (Score:3)
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
Privacy et al (Score:1)
The most annoying thing about the UK "poll tax" fiasco was that it was completely incompetantly managed and they never bothered to tell you when you were being taken to court. It was (and still is) perfectly possible to get a criminal record due to the administrative incompetance of what used to be your local council. With all the credit record and job application problems that involved.
I sincerely hope that the ALCU win, but that the binding precedent set is that it is impossible to commence a case (excepting federal / criminal) if the defendant has not been proven to have been informed. Then all we need to do (!) is import it across the Atlantic
Oh well.
Protecting your sources (Score:1)
Still Cleaning Up (Score:1)
Why Yahoo? (Score:2)
If Yahoo receives a subpoena, should it not obey the court?
Another thought: if Yahoo tries to defend against the subpoena, it might be held liable for the content. By just passing the information under court order, they remove themselves from the appearance of moderation. In courts, moderation == liability for content.
All thoughts above are just ideas. Assembly language would be easier to develop in than learning law.
So just what are you supposed to do??? (Score:3)
Seems like the ACLU's lawyers are trying to rig the game so no one can win (except themselves of course).
If you don't comply with a subpoena, you go to jail. Or, I guess the judge issuing the subpoena would slap down some hefty fines in the case of a corperation like Yahoo.
But if you *DO* obey the laful order of a court of law...
... the ACLU comes in and tries to sue you into oblivion?!?!?!?
You don't have to be any kind of lawyer to know that this kind of no-win situation is patently ridiculous. Just what ARE you supposed to do in a situation like this?
Sounds to me like this aquadrool person is miffed that Yahoo didn't fight his battle against the plantiff for him, and now wants to be seen as some poor victim of the big evil corperate Yahoo giant.
john
Solution (Score:5)
If you want to protect your privacy, change your isp.
www.zeroknowledge.com [zeroknowledge.com] - the world's only encrypted anonymous ISP. There is NO WAY to trace you whatsoever. Zeroknowledge can't even trace you when you're using their servers - and you're encrypted and routed through 3 countries first. A legal nightmare.
I use zeroknowledge and I post with impunity.
They sell a total privacy solution too - complete with information on how to protect yourself from places like yahoo.
Hoist by Their Own Petard? (Score:4)
Sounds like a direct violation of this clause.
Re:Solution (Score:1)
Re:So just what are you supposed to do??? (Score:2)
You can fight a subpoena, but you can't put the cat back in the bag. The user was not allowed to fight the subpoena because they were not informed.
Re:Why Yahoo? (Score:3)
Agree, even the press release blaims courts (Score:2)
It's also not like users aren't given fair warning (or that it's done as the press release states: "Without notifying the targeted users". Yahoo! has a very detailed Privacy Policy [yahoo.com] that explicitly states the following:
Based on my reading, they don't even have to wait for a court order as long as someone feels they were harmed.
You miss the point. (Score:2)
Their is a number of cases that keep the information about keeping the speakers of certain things private. Revealing this information quell full expression of free speech.
On the other hand, if one publishes truly defamatory information, then there is a responsibility for it. There has been cases for mentioned in the news [sorehands.com] commpanies filing lawsuits, and once they get the names, they will cease the prosecution of the case.
This type of action is obviously abusive. Now, if Yahoo (or someone else) receives a nasty letter from a lawyer, w/o giving a chance for the individual to oppose(via a motion to quash), it is wrong.
In a lawsuit, if an attorney sends a request for information, it is not required to be provided until the court compels it.
How about a new acronym? YAFAL - Yet Another Friggen Abusive Lawsuit.
Re:Why Yahoo? (Score:1)
Without notifying the targeted users, and without assessing the validity of the legal claims underlying the subpoenas, Yahoo! systematically discloses identifying information such as users' names, e-mail addresses and Internet protocol addresses. Yahoo! is unique among major online companies in its refusal to notify its users of such subpoenas and provide them with an opportunity to challenge the information requests.
The reason they are suing Yahoo is that Yahoo aparently does not give the anonymous person the chance to fight the subpoena, and remain anonymous. (Which can be done, I would think, since the fighting would go through a lawyer.)
I understand the point, but having no knowledge of legal matters in general, and not wanting to read ALL the user aggreaments yahoo has, I don't have a clue how this will turn out.
It all boils down to what is in those user aggrements. If Yahoo is only doing what it said it would when the user signed up, they are probably fine. (And should be too, since responsability should be placed on the user to find out such policies before posting. If you don't like it, go somewhere else to post. Caveat emptor.)
Of course that's just my opinion, which is worth exactly the paper it's printed on.
You have to wonder.... (Score:1)
I mean, read between the lines.... Here's what is in the complaint....Aquacool_2000 makes derogatory statements about his OWN employer and its officers.
(Read between the lines) Next, someone at the employer notices that just a little too much information is in these postings and gets suspicious that a Aquacool_2000 is an employee.
(In the complaint) Yahoo releases the information upon court order. AnswerThink finds out it _IS_ an employee, and then does something reasonable....
"Aquacool_2000, you are fired." (Face it, that is pretty reasonable. Does a company have to employ someone who is trash talking in public?)
What do you think happens next? Aquacool_2000 accepts responsibility for being stupid? (Nah. This is America.) Lawsuit? Sure.
We can't sue the employer, they probably were within their rights. If we can't sue the employer, it _must_ be Yahoo then that is liable. "Yeah, that's right. I'll sue Yahoo. If Yahoo hadn't obeyed a court order, then I'd still have my job, no matter how stupid I am. And I could continue to make my company look foolish."
Duh. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, even if you are wearing an AC mask. Simple common sense.
But, this is america.
Re:You have to wonder.... (Score:2)
A judge can rule that the public's interest in having this person remain anonymous, and remain at the company is more important than the company's interest in finding out who this person is so they can be fired. That is the issue here. Yahoo isn't allowing the person to come before the judge to make that decision. Yahoo is simply rolling over and providing the information without giving the affected person any recourse.
Burris