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Seth Schiesel/NYTimes covers your privacy with respect to your entertainment choices in Your Own Affair, More (VCR) or Less (MP3). Basically, if the RIAA wants your personal info from an ISP because of suspected filesharing, it only need write a subpoena and send it to your ISP. No judge, no opportunity to protest by the user. No privacy law in place to protect any user from having their information requested and delivered by the ISP. On the other hand, if say, the IRS wants your cable records, they must show a judge good reason, and the user has the ability to respond, before the information is turned over to the requesting party. However, there is no statute that covers user privacy for satellite cable.
"Consumers are almost totally unaware that different modes of communication carry with them different expectations of privacy and have different rules," said Paul Glist, a communications lawyer with Cole, Raywid & Braverman in Washington who has represented major cable-television companies. "Every line of business has a different set of regulations, and it really is a maze. There are many times when a company comes to me and they just want to do the right thing and they can't figure it out. You might have one law saying you have to disclose certain information to law enforcement and another law saying you can't disclose the information unless other conditions are met."
For instance, federal law says law enforcement agencies may monitor the phone numbers a citizen is dialing, as they are being dialed, after certifying only that the information is "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation." Under that provision, the person under surveillance need not even be the person suspected of breaking the law. Generally the subject of that surveillance is not notified of the government's action.
By contrast, a separate law says that even when law enforcement agencies obtain a court order to gain access to a consumer's video rental records, the consumer must be notified before those records are turned over.
Very confusing, but the article does make the point that distinguishing between different types of technologies that in the digital world are really pretty similar is silly, and therefore, the crazy patchwork quilt of privacy protects that differ from one technology to the next should be streamlined. And as the quote above notes, keeping track of the differences is hard on companies, too.
Posted by Mary Hodder at October 02, 2003 01:31 PM