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Comcast Sued Over Internet Data Gathering 94

Posted by timothy from the money-for-lawyers dept.
saikou writes: "Slashdot already had an article about Comcast using transparent cache systems to track their cable modem users' browsing habits (purely for improvment of their networks, of course) and now here's the follow-up. Newsbyte posted yesterday a story about the lawsuit, demanding $100 per day of tracking for each customer. I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s) :)" Update: 05/25 12:37 GMT by T : burgburgburg points to a New York Times article about the case, and reminds you of two previous mentions of the controversial user-tracking effort (one, two).
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Comcast Sued Over Internet Data Gathering More

Comcast Sued Over Internet Data Gathering

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  • Good to see (Score:3, Informative)

    by donnacha ( 161610 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @08:18AM (#3583628) Homepage


    It's good to see that Comcast haven't, in this case, been able to use general technical ignorance to bamboozle their way out of this one.

    It looks as if they actually expected to get away with claiming they needed that info for caching purposes. I hope that they're nicely stunned at being asked to prove why they felt it necessary to tie that info back to individual user identities.

    BTW, I presume that most /.ers have always assumed that their ISP was tracking their online activities.

  • So... does your browsing habits come out in court as a matter of public record?

  • Lawful tracking (Score:3, Informative)

    by pullmoll ( 449700 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @08:34AM (#3583654)
    Right of way for protection of data privacy - are we the people?

    Are you really sure you're innocent? Do you expect your representatives which have been elected by youself to believe into your integrity without needing evidence? A minority of the European Parliament seems to be in doubt and precautiously suspects its citizens at the time being. On May 29 2002 in Brussels will be vote if the fundamental rights of the citizens in Europe as there are protection of privacy, freedom of speech and the presumption of innocense should be abolished. Law enforcement authorities shall be authorized to store any data about electronic communications of EU-citizens. The most important rights are endangered to be sacrificed in the course of fight agains terrorism.

    Neither the individual case nor interim measures will be considered when it will come to storing data. Thus data would not be saved temporary or in an appropriate manner. Regarding the intention of a part of the European Parliament retention of all individuals' electronic communication shall be done without control to enable further investigations about illegal actions in the future. Therewith all citizens will be assumed to be potential criminals. On April 18 this violation of the basic rights was defeated by a close vote.

    For this narrow majority to become an absolute one a letter to the European Parliament was phrased which can be signed here:
    http://stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter. txt. Over 40 international civil rights organizations and user groups in the internet subscribed to this letter. Til now the signatures of more than 7500 people all over the world were registered.

    If you don't agree with your government suspecting you to be a potential terrorist and storing all your electronic communication without a cause you should sign this letter.
    • If you don't agree with your government suspecting you to be a potential terrorist and storing all your electronic communication without a cause you should sign this letter.

      Of course, if you don't agree with your government suspecting you as a potential terrorist, then you are a potential terrorist. Please include with your signature as much personal information as you can, including your bookmark file....
    • I wonder how it can be reconciliated with the right of "looking at every private data saved on individual, as well as a right of rectification" that some citizen in some European country do indeed have : CNIL for example in France, has normally to watch and applicate fine if this right is not observed.
  • Need I remind you that if you use Comcast as your ISP you are using *their* networks. Its not like they don't have a right to maintain it anyways they want. Unless the TOS specifically says "We will not log your activity" this lawsuit should be thrown out.

    Tom

    • Re:Um, stupid? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mercury ( 13121 )
      No, nothing in the TOS to specificly state that.
      Just a little FEDERAL LAW.
      Read the article before you post idiocy.
      • Um, the owner of a private network has the right to monitor all traffic on it. You have no right to privacy over private property that you don't own. If its not in violation of your TOS your ISP could post your browsing habits on CNN if they wanted to.

        Sorry to burst your bubble. It is different for telephones because it is governmentally regulated. Any joe-sixpack can become an ISP.

        Admitedly I'd rather not see my ISP divulge my browsing habits but I could care less if they archive them. I assume the risk that when I go online they are actively logging what I do.

        Tom
      • To supplement my reply:

        An "allegation" is not a conviction. I could allege that you are a mass-murderer.

        So while these $$$-sucking bastards allege it violates the 1984 law [which I haven't read] that doesn't mean its so.

        Even still its naive to think blocking your cable side ISP from logging will protect your privacy. I mean they still need to know what you are doing. So if a person at your cable ISP wanted to see what you specifically were doing it wouldn't be hard even if it wasn't logged to disk.

        Also I think that preventing logging is irresponsible. You can do far more damage with a bi-directional connection then you could with say Cable TV. I would rather have my ISP keep daily logs [and not divulge them to anyone unless required] if it meant that catching say kidding-porn distributors became easier.

        • Jeez. People like you are one of the reasons our country is starting to suck so much. "Shut up and eat your gruel, citizen, you should expect to be exploited". Some of us don't think that it's proper to treat customers as little money-making machines. So what if it's naive to think that blocking my ISP from logging me guarantees my privacy? Just becase someone else might snoop on me, I should allow, ANYONE to do it?

          Go live in some south american dictatorship where they approve of people like you and leave normal Americans alone.

          • Wow, angry much?

            You should learn something about the real world of computer security. Then come back to me with this insane little attitude.

            If you think anything over the internet is private you are living in a dream world. The only reason anything is private [hence expectation of privacy] over the phone is because access is heavily restricted and the government said so. There is no real reason to expect privacy over the phone other than the laws in place.

            What I mean is that unlike say a VoIP using a cipher to encrypt the transmission, a regular phone sends your conversation in plaintext. So if it wasn't for the laws inplace you'd really have no expectation of any privacy whatsoever.

            Over the internet anyone can run a hub, a server, a proxy, an ISP, etc. When you access "slashdot" you are going through probably 10 to 15 different hops [I go through more then 30 hops myself]. Each one of those hops could belong to a different private company each of which have the right to log activity. I mean I don't pay Sprint but I do use their servers [they are in the path from me to /.]. So why shouldn't they be able to keep tabs on non-customers and customers alike?

            I mean you think your local telco doesn't keep tabs on what calls you make [to whom and when]? The power from this logging only comes when it is abused. Telco's don't readily give out your call information to anyone just like ISPs shouldn't.

            That doesn't mean ISPs shouldn't log stuff if they want to though, it just means they should be responsible with it.
      • a "little FEDERAL LAW" that applies to Cable TV. That'd be like applying telephone laws to Internet access. Then I can't even record incoming traffic without permission. I can't record conversations, etc. I don't think this law applies to Internet access provided over the same medium. Next thing you know, you can't swear over wireless access, since there are FCC laws about that.
    • All it takes is all ISP to add "you give all right to privacy when you connect with us , and all your data can be sold to anybody wanting them." and then what ? You would be satisfied ? Sorry but you are excetly like the proponent of "opt out". privacy should always an "opt in" to be given up. I hate to think i have to watch every single of my step, watch every single word I type. A bit like a dictature.

      Maybe you do not care being observed , but I do even if I do not do anything wrong. Just like I would care if somebody installed camera on my back to observe every on my move, what i look for as information, or what my friends write me as letter.

      Yes , it wasn't written specifically "we will not log your activity", but it was enither specified "we won't sell all your email adress to spammer", neither " We won't post a lsit of the web page you visited on a special page", "we won't display the content of personnal letter" , "we won't mock you in any fashion", "we won#ät ask you for your first born" etc... Your argument is moot. If activity is to be logged it should be specified. Not the other way around.
      • All it takes is all ISP to add "you give all right to privacy when you connect with us , and all your data can be sold to anybody wanting them." and then what ? You would be satisfied ? Sorry but you are excetly like the proponent of "opt out". privacy should always an "opt in" to be given up. I hate to think i have to watch every single of my step, watch every single word I type. A bit like a dictature.

        Welcome to the real world Neo.

        Sorry to burst your bubble but what you do with *their* network *is* their business.

        I mean next you will say Walmart shouldn't be allowed to have cameras in their own stores.

        Hey, seriously people if you are going to troll about computer security get a clue.

        Tom
        • what *you* do with *their* network *is* their business.
          True but misleading. They assume a responsibility for preserving the privacy of *you* if they gather any data which allows identification. I would imagine that Walmart has some very strict rules as to what their cameras can be used for.
          • Um those are different arguments

            *if* you monitor
            _and_
            *what* you do with the information

            This thread [and your post] lead me to think its ok for walmart to "spy" on you as long as they are good with the information, but an ISP cannot even monitor.

            Another little aspect though is that an ISP that logs your activity is not violating your privacy because what you are doing is by definition from their point of view not private.

            Its like me asking you for directions to Toronto and expecting you to not have a clue where I am going.

            Tom
            • Um those are different arguments
              *if* you monitor
              _and_
              *what* you do with the information

              Not different.
              *WHAT* you monitor has a lot to do with what it's possible to *DO* with the information.

              Another little aspect though is that an ISP that logs your activity is not violating your privacy because what you are doing is by definition from their point of view not private.
              I doubt that ISP logs would be public information any more that your water bill, your gas bill, your electric bill.

              Its like me asking you for directions to Toronto and expecting you to not have a clue where I am going.
              There is a strong possibility that you (whoever you are) are going somewhere in the vicinity of Toronto or at least in that general direction. If the conversation takes place in Dawson Creek, you could just as well be heading for the maritimes.

              • I doubt that ISP logs would be public information any more that your water bill, your gas bill, your electric bill.

                What the fuck does this mean? just because an ISP logs your activity doesn't directly imply they will sell it to the highest bidder.

                There is a strong possibility that you (whoever you are) are going somewhere in the vicinity of Toronto or at least in that general direction. If the conversation takes place in Dawson Creek, you could just as well be heading for the maritimes.

                And naturally you missed the whole fucking point. My analogy was that asking someone how to get to Toronto is like asking your ISP for the IP of a DNS entry as well the routing information.

                Tom
                • just because an ISP logs your activity doesn't directly imply they will sell it to the highest bidder.
                  True, and just because they have it, doesn't imply that they have the right to sell it to anybody else, and may even have restrictions on what analyses can be legally performed on the stored data. Just because a business has customer data, the business does not have complete and unrestricted use of that data.
                  Asking your ISP for the IP of a DNS entry means what, exactly. Too much chance that it's a broken link or something misspelled somewhere.

                  The ISP will log certain data to help insure that the network is up, stays up, and help diagnose problems. Any other use of the data is probably very dangerous.

                  • True, and just because they have it, doesn't imply that they have the right to sell it to anybody else, and may even have restrictions on what analyses can be legally performed on the stored data. Just because a business has customer data, the business does not have complete and unrestricted use of that data.

                    Um, "selling" the information was not what Comcast was claiming todo though. You /. types are the ones who brought that up.

                    Comcast can do whatever they damn well please with the information which includes printing logs up on playing cards for midnight poker.

                    Tom
                    • Comcast can do whatever they damn well please with the information
                      That's where we disagree and what the courts will decide. Methinks that an ISP is just like any other business in that it cannot do what it damn well pleases.
    • This being slashdot, I guess it's only natural that you didn't read the article before rushing to post your opinion.

      According to the statute, 47 USC 551(b), cable operators are prohibited from collecting "personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned."
      • Ok I ask this. How can the ISP *not* know who you are when you perform a request?

        I mean if I do a request 24.112.8.1 gets hit [from my IP]. The ISP gateway *must* know who I am.

        This law passed in 1984 for CABLE TV doesn't really seem to apply to CABLE INTERNET. Fuck people, use your fucking brains ya fucking idiots, holy fuck, I mean does it take a fucking genius to realize this?

        Tom
        • Well in most cases the cable OPERATOR is the same as the cable ISP. And just because they have to know it doesn't mean that they have to log it. If they are logging all the data that flows though their network they must have one hell of a system devoted to storing it and filtering though it. And knowing who you are is diffrent from keeping track of any information you generate.
          • The issue is the expectation of privacy. If you expect your data to be known [to the ISP] you cannot expect it to be private. Hence no violation of your rights.

            Thats my whole point. If my ISP divulged my browsing habits to non-involved 3rd parties [e.g. a data mining operation] then I would say my rights were violated. But if the ISP keeps the info to themselves they can archive as much as they damn well please.

            I'd bring up quarms on a consumer level though. If my ISP is logging gigs of data from the users someone has to pay for it, and that someone is the users...

            Tom

    • Re:Um, stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AnotherBlackHat ( 265897 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @12:08PM (#3584100) Homepage
      Need I remind you that if you use Comcast as your ISP you are using *their* networks. Its not like they don't have a right to maintain it anyways they want. Unless the TOS specifically says "We will not log your activity" this lawsuit should be thrown out.


      The right to swing *their* fist stops where the customers nose begins.

      There are limits to what you can do with your property,
      and those limits are in part defined by injury it causes others.
      If you want to do something as egregious as Comcast
      (i.e. something your customers wouldn't reasonably expect you to do)
      then you had damn well better state that up front in large print.
      In other words, it is like they like they don't have a right
      to maintain their network anyway they want.
      Unless the TOS states in large print
      "WE WILL LOG YOUR ACTIVITY AND SELL IT TO THIRD PARTIES"
      then they are at fault.

      There are limits, and Comcast exceeded them.

      -- this is not a .sig
      • Who says an ISP that logs your activities sells it to 3rd parties? There are two separate issues here

        1. Can they log information *at all*?
        2. What should they be allowed todo with it?

        Tom
    • But even ignoring the fact that this case is about a law that applies specifically to cable operators about collecting information without permission.. let's look at what you are saying.

      It's the telephone company's network as well.. does that mean they can listen and record all your telephone calls?
    • Unless the TOS specifically says "We will not log your activity" this lawsuit should be thrown out.

      From comcastoneline.com:

      COMCAST STATEMENT ON INTERNET PRIVACY

      Philadelphia (February 13, 2002) - Comcast Cable Communications President Stephen B. Burke issued the following statement today regarding Internet privacy:

      "Comcast respects the privacy of all our subscribers and is committed to fully protect their rights. Comcast has not shared and will not share personal information about where our subscribers go on the Web, either for any internal purpose or with any outside party, except as required by law. Consistent with our subscriber agreement and our privacy policy, which every subscriber acknowledges before receiving our service, Comcast reviews information in aggregate form only for purposes of network performance management to ensure an optimal Internet network experience for our subscribers."
  • ...that comcast is simply using this proxy system to reduce its external traffic and attempt to make web-browsing faster for its users rather than as some part of some great conspiracy?

    • Re:Is it possible... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Nef ( 46782 )
      Actually, no it's not possible. Had comcast ever used any type of proxy setup, your scenario would be a sound one. I have been a Comcast subscriber for almost a year now (due to geographical isolation in the sticks of Southern Jersey) and at no point during my use have I ever detected the use of any type of proxies.

      Although I agree that said use would not only be efficient, but if documented properly in the TOS, legal, those circumstances just don't exist.

      So in this instance, not only were they in the wrong, they were downright despicable (in tying their "aggregate" usage statistics to individual users)
      • I'm not sure what you're gettting at. You say you detected no use of proxies? Forgive me if I'm missing the obvious here but couldn't they have just added one recently? or maybe since you're geographically isolated it doesn't make economic sense for them to proxy the traffic from your part of the network.

        The main problem I have with this is that the entire evidence that they are using this data for marketing purposes seems to come from a single email on a mailing list that is here [interesting-people.org].

        Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of big companies....but so far this looks like a well orchestrated flaming campaign against comcast. Can someone actually paste some links with any kind of proof other than that they use proxy servers, which 90% of the rest of the ISP's in the world also use?
        • Perhaps I should have been more specific. To quote the email:
          >>This allows them to not only log all http requests, but to also log the >>response. Maybe they want to profile their customer browsing history for >>subsidiaries or resale to marketers. Maybe they want to do their part in >>The War on Freedom. Maybe they just want passwords to porn sites. >>
          Apparently they aren't using it to maximize bandwidth, because it's not >>configured to serve cached data


          In saying "I've detected no use of proxies" I was referring to the fact that at no time during my being a subscriber have I ever received cached data from the proxies.

          As far as evidence, if you'd like I could do some quick diagnostics (I don't have any log files handy with the relevant info) to prove what was already stated in the email [interesting-people.org] . But you already read that...right?
          • I see *zip* its call coming back to me....

            Seriously...thanks for explaining, I hadn't realised their cache wasn't actually caching. Thats very dodgy.... I'll stop defending the capitalist bastards now :)
  • It says 100$ per customer or 1000$ for all customers per day. The first one is extremely unlikely. And 1000$ bucks is not so much - any major company can afford this. They probably made more money by the data.
  • I'd heard about Comcast doing this from a local news report; seems like I missed the postings here. Thanks for all the info.

    Heh, and as I'm typing this, a "we're hiring" ad for Comcast is on cable... "Enjoy an exciting career with Comcast! Technician! Sales! Spy!"
    ----
    Apple hardware still too expensive? How about a raffle ticket? [macraffle.com]

  • The Real Problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by donnacha ( 161610 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @09:01AM (#3583695) Homepage


    It isn't so much the commercial use of this information that bothers me but, rather, that it's being accumulated in the first place leaves the door open for shady government agencies to have access to it in a harder to fight way than something slightly more attributable and, therefore, possible to fight such as Carnivore.

    If you think about it, there was no real reason for the FBI to stick their neck out like that with an actual hardware wire-tap of their own when most ISPs would probably bend over backwards to share the info they've already collected for commercial reasons.

    Want to know who's been visiting dangerous, subversive websites [zmag.org]? Simply send Agent Crewcut to play a few rounds of golf with CEO Weasel and suggest that there might be some juicy government contracts coming up for grabs.

  • Comcast did a bad bad thing.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by flatlineloc ( 581456 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @09:08AM (#3583708) Homepage
    IANAL, but heres the links to what I believe to be the relevant laws comcast may have violated (mainly for being a cable company) Cable TV Privacy Act of 1994 [epic.org]Which in short provides provisions that limit:

    (A) the nature of personally identifiable information collected or to be collected with respect to the subscriber and the nature of the use of such information;
    (B) the nature, frequency, and purpose of any disclosure which may be made of such information, including an identification of the types of persons to whom the disclosure may be made;
    (C) the period during which such information will be maintained by the cable operator;
    (D) the times and place at which the subscriber may have access to such information in accordance with subsection (d) of this section; and
    (E) the limitations provided by this section with respect to the collection and disclosure of information by a cable operator and the right of the subscriber under subsections (f) and (h) of this section to enforce such limitations.

     As well if I'm not incorrect here,the ECPA [eff.org]
    More fun privacy law here, Privacy Act of 1974 [opm.gov]

    And of course if they customer has a kid under 13 who they gathered data on there was another law I just couldn't quite manage to find in regards to making this pretty illegal. And you can't make your customers opt out of federal law last I checked.

    Anyway, it hasn't been my experience that lawyers take cases they have no chance of winning where the payout is based on them winning.
  • They are collecting information to keep updated their database about best p0rn sites.
  • (1) Read the "End User License Agreement" that Comcast requires of its customers--it is in explicit contradition to their public statements w/r to the collection and use of end user communications. [they claim explicit ownership of the data that you place on their networks as a subscriber] (2) If Comcast were to exercise its self-promoted rights under said agreement--and I have some technical evidence that they have--then not only are they at issue with the 1984 Federal satute--but, Pennsylvania's 1996 ammendment to its Cable TV Act. [I would strongly suspect that other states' Cable Acts are cast from the same template] As to no collection of "personally indentifiable information"--that's patent nonsense. The architecture of the the DOCCIS v.1.1 infrastructure that Comcast has implemented requires the explicit registration of every communications device on their network with a specific subscriber account--each datagram produced by every device on the Comcast network is directly identifiable to a specific subscriber account. The nature of the proxy is such that a query on the order of "Show me all data transactions that the household of Smith, John S. has enganged in with http://www.cnn.com over the past 12 hours" is a trivial undertaking--requiring perhaps 15 minutes worth of effort. [the MAC# of the DOCCIS modem is recorded in the billing/user account database--the rest is a trivial filtering/datbase query exercise]

  • $100 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DoctorFrog ( 556179 )
    saikou commented in the intro: I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s) :)"

    The $100 is exclusive of lawyer's fees. The NYT article states:

    Goren, who predicted ``months or years'' of litigation, is seeking attorney's fees plus damages of at least $100 per day for every Comcast subscriber.

  • For about the past month, any http connection I've made would be really slow and lossy, even though ping times to the sites were good. Anyone know if Covad is trying to set up some kind of transparent proxy on their network too?

    • Just an off-the-wall idea... Has it ever occurred to you that the reason it's slow, could also be because they haven't set up a cache for you to use? Maybe you and a hundred other people like you, are all using the same pipes for the same content at the same time, transmitted a hundred times instead of once.

      Somewhere at some ISP, some guy is looking at blinkenlights, shaking his head with sadness as a thousand people all download the exact same ninety megabyte file containing a movie trailer. And then the phone rings: "My download is going slow," says the annoyed customer.

  • Lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guanxi ( 216397 ) on Saturday May 25, 2002 @11:06AM (#3583952)

    I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s)

    We could endlessly repeat well-worn ideas yet never think about them, but let's try:

    People complain that class action contingency attorneys pull a scam on their targets (e.g. Comcast) and their clients (e.g. Comcasts customers) and take all the $. Think about it; contingency lawyers (lawyers that collect large sums if they win, rather than smaller sums win or lose) and class action (grouping large numbers of small complaints into one big one: e.g. $100 damages * 1 million people = $100 million lawsuit) are the only way the less-than-rich get access to our court system.

    o Contingency lawyers let everyone, not just the rich, use our court system. Our court system was too expensive for anyone but the rich. You must have a lawyer (technically you can represent yourself, just like my grandmother is technically allowed to hack the Linux kernel), and lawyers are expensive. If you couldn't afford one, no justice for you -- very democratic. Now, contingency lawyers take your case based on the hope you'll win and be able to pay them. Think about it -- would you work hundreds (or more) hours, hire experts and make every other investment at your own expense, and risk that if you lose (the other side has attorneys too) that you get $0.00? All that time, effort and money completely sunk? No way to buy dinner? Pay the mortgage? Put the kids through college? Even if you do win, you work now and get paid next year. Now you understand why contingency lawyers demand a larger percentage when they win.

    o What other check, besides Class Action, is there on corporations screwing the millions of individuals who buy their products, work for them, share communities with them and invest hard-earned money in them? There aren't enough gov't regulators -- they couldn't even stop the multi-billion dollar Savings and Loan or Enron or other huge scandals -- can they protect the $10,000 of pension money Jane Elderly invested in Creative Financial Reporting Inc.? The citizens of a polluted neighborhood whose health is at risk? Or simply Ed Jones who wasted on their lies about their useless product? What deters some executive from twisting the financial statements, or ignoring the pollution or lying to consumers, simply to protect his job? What motivates the Board of Directors to question instead of rubber stamping their buddy the CEO who gave them their cushy jobs? It's not fear of the a few regulators; it's fear of massive lawsuits on behalf of every one of those people they might screw.

    Sure, there are some bad lawyers who fleece the system, but so do some companies, doctors, politicians, bankers, police, programmers, etc. etc. Like everyone else, there are good lawyers and bad ones, and they all have their good and bad days. Plus, lawyers can't fleece anyone unless a jury and/or judge helps.

    Funny that it's the part of our court system that serves the politically weak, not the part that serves the RIAA, the Fortune 500 corporations, etc., that gets all the mainstream criticism.

    • What's the point of a legal system where the lawyers get all the money? THe system itself is making the money, and those doing who actually have the complaint get squat. Why should they bother suing then?

      Court cases where lawyers get all hte money are rediculous.

      • The Point (Score:3, Insightful)

        by guanxi ( 216397 )
        The point, for Comcast customers, is not the money. It's only $100; how much compensation do they deserve? It's the privacy and Comcast's behavior. If Comcast loses, neither they nor other ISPs will take a similar risk again. Isn't privacy valuable?

        The lawyers take a big financial risk. For risking tens of thousands of their own money (are you paying their secretaries, office rent, research, etc.) and spending so much of their life on the case, should they get only the good feeling of having improved privacy for Americans (if they win)?

        The Comcast customers get $xx buck each and privacy. The attorneys who put in their time and money, not knowing if they'd get it back, they get the cash.
    • Another option is small claims court, provided your claim is small enough. While you can't use a lawyer, neither can the party you're suing, which in the case of a corporation means they must send an employee of the company other than a lawyer to represent themselves. Unless the corporation has a physical presence in your locality, it is almost always less expensive for them to capitulate than to show up.

      Secondly, a class action suit is a much smaller deterrent than ten thousand small claims. In the case of a class action, the corp has a single suit that they can focus on and may actually win. In the case of ten thousand small claims, if the claims have any merit at all, they cannot possibly defend against even a majority of them.

      • An interesting idea, but you'll never get ten thousand small claims. I'll bet nothing even close to it has ever happened. And seeing that it's never happened, it's not much of a deterrent. The executives of MegaCorp are not working late to prevent ten thousand small claims; they are working right now (9:20pm EDT) to avoid a class action.

        Do you think all those poeople will go down to the courthouse, fill out the forms, file them, prepare for trial, then show up? How many class members even know they have a claim? You can't even get them to download an alternate web browser.

  • Freep article... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by echolex ( 97522 ) <echolex@@@comcast...net> on Saturday May 25, 2002 @11:28AM (#3584011) Homepage Journal
    I'm just going to assume that the tracking comes from the possiblity of the merge with AT&T. The freep [freep.com] had a really good article yesterday about Comcast not being too happy with the bandwidth consupmtion from users.

    "Comcast points out that it is not cheap to provide high-speed service to a million customers, as it does now. At its network operations center in Cherry Hill, N.J., workers electronically monitor more than 50,000 pieces of equipment throughout the company's broadband network."

    It wouldn't be surprising if they were tracking "equipment" (users more like it) to see who the bandwidth "hogs" are.

    Better take advantage of Usenet acess while it lasts!
    • Hmm I might be stupid here, but aren't people in the states paying for some specifik bandwith? Why complain about users hoggin the bandwith, they sold it to them, they should provide it..

  • The social side of it is that no one wants to be watched by Big Brother or marketers or whatever. And it's against the law for Comcast to do it. It seems that most Slashdotters are well aware of and justifiably sensitive to these issues.

    Then there's the technical side, and I'm kind of surprised that so few voices here speak up about it. When you have a network with a lot of users, it is very natural and intelligent to want to optimize it and use it at maximum efficiency. Caching proxies are a great tool at your disposal. It would almost be stupid if you didn't use them. (Yes, I'm a Squid [squid-cache.org] lover. IMHO, almost every ISP, net-connected business, school, etc should have one.)

    But running a web proxy comes with a responsibility. Someone might abuse it, and if the admin receives a complaint about something that came from his box, he needs to be able to look in a log and see who really deserves to receive that complaint, lest he be left holding the hot potato. You can't be a common carrier and not be held responsible for what goes through your network, unless your finger is always ready to point at who is responsible.

    It looks like the social issues are the squeaky wheel, so they're going to be addressed. Just remember that this comes with a performance cost.

  • I used to be a BT Openworld subscriber here in the UK. They also had a "transparent proxy" running. I freely sent all my data in cleartext until one day their connection to the US went down, and every time I tried to access any sites in the US, it spat back a proxy error at me. So I setup my own squid server in Ireland and routed all my traffic securely through there.

    I phoned up the support line and got some slimy "technician" who claimed nothing was wrong. I told him his proxy server was spitting back errors at me, to which he replied he didn't think they had any proxy servers and were my proxy settings ok.

    So he put me onto his "manager" who told me I wasn't supposed to know about the proxy and he'd look into it. That was the last I heard of it, 10 minutes later they'd fixed it.
  • ... when you are a subscriber of a Cable ISP. Get over it. Whether or not the TOS states explicitly that information is being gathered, there is no implied privacy when using a data network. A recent case has upheld this. (I'm sorry, but the exact case escapes me ... however, it appeared on these very pages.)

    That being said, there are NO Federal laws governing data passing over a cable TV connection. The FCC (and most state) regulations govern only the television signals that pass over the cable. The cable company is granted, in most cases, a exclusive contract to provide this service to a community. The contracts were mostly written prior to the internet's popularity, and hence have no conditions or obligations in them pertaining to data.

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