Cox: your information for sale to interested parties

Now this is a full-service window. One stop shopping for wiretaps, call records, surfing habits, data retention. This must be a pretty good racket!

 

Hello,
I don't get it, what is this?
Mrk

 

This is a list that Cox Internet/Cable/Phone has gone to the trouble of creating. They are now in the business of selling your information to anyone with a subpoena, court order, investigation, etc. And not only are they excited to sell your information, they've formalized a price list because apparently they must be selling a lot of information. You just order your evidence a la carte, and the engineering chefs go in the back and whip up your data, fresh to serve. It's not that this was unknown information, but that they are so brazen to sell anyone out to make a dollar. They might as well hang a sign that says "No Request Refused! Financing Available!"

 

XeroBank, are you suggesting that it's unethical for Cox Communications to comply with lawful court orders?

 

1. It's for law enforcement (Yes, I'm aware ISPs can be decieved), this type of thing has gone on in the U.S for some time and under the "War on Terror" excuse, it's just going to get worse, get used to it.

2. If you're online, I really don't care what service you're trying to sell or how many precautions you take, you CAN be found. If this were the 1980s and on back, you might actually have a chance. You now live in a world of street corner cameras, medical records available in massive databases nationwide, electronic/computer this and that. Again, get used to it.

3. They are brazen about it because they have the approval of the government to do such things, especially in the U.S....get used to it.

Guys, give up on this privacy thing, it's over. The very same companies you buy your privacy software from have your email, your credit card number, address, and so on.

 

Ethics and law have nothing to do with each other, it is only coincidence that they sometimes overlap. For Cox to comply with the law isn't a matter of ethics. How they go about doing it is another matter.

 

Don't lose heart. Societies do change. You harm yourself and others when you give up or tell others to get used to it. Don't get used to it. Allowing yourself to become conditioned paves the way for further abuses. It is we the people that the government derives their power from. It is ultimately us that give approval for such things. Don't give up, and certainly don't tell other people to resign or give up thier rights.

 

I gather this is what you are trying to point out.

 

The law does not make something right or wrong. What is right or wrong occasionally gets a law to represent that. The law does not speak to ethics or morality. The law merely reflects what society is willing to allow to be enforced upon them.

Yes. Selling it like a lemonade stand.

 

Xero, while I don't disagree with your line of thinking whatsoever, the truth is the people have become so conditioned to letting things be, that they have lost power. I don't think we the people approved of government wiretapping in the name of terror prevention, 4.15 cent gasoline rates, or any of the other economic/privacy/security problems my country is facing. However, approved or not, that's the situation here.

Perhaps in other countries it is not true, but here, money decides policy, competition, security, among other things, not people. Those with it play the drum, those without it march to the beat.

 

Then it's time to move. I'm sad to say it, but the third world is looking ever more appealing. The only thing the US had going for it was the almighty buck, and we all know what happened to that. Freedom was flushed down the toilet a long time ago, and now the American dollar is following suit.

The US has become a sad, pathetic shell of itself. In the third world, I'll be in a place where "at least I know I'm free."

And the American people have become fat, mindless, gutless slobs. No offense. I'm an American too.

 

There is but one purpose to all government, once it becomes self-aware: to assuage the mob. The roman emperor Juneval did it with giving away loaves of bread and holding roman games. China does it now through brutal force and obfuscation. The thing any government fears most is it's people. Money can buy a lot of things. It can buy opinion, it can buy votes, it can buy media. What it cannot ever buy is integrity. Integrity is not just a character of your personality, it is what you believe and what you do. When you think you don't have power, you don't. When you refuse to give up your liberty, you have the power. When you fight for someone else's liberty, we all have the power.

Leaving isn't the answer. That line of thinking will leave you with nowhere else to go, eventually. It can happen anywhere, the easy thing is to run away and try and leave your burden on the shoulders of others. The right thing to do is to stand your ground. If you only have rights as long as they are convenient, you can expect them to vanish when it is inconvenient. Nobody can liberate you for you. Liberty not fought for is no liberty at all. So when you are under trial, it is the crucible that earns you and your children their liberty.

 

Bravo !

 

Again, agreed on almost all points. A lawmaker may go to Washington with the purest of intents and a boatload of integrity, but he/she will soon find themselves to be the goldfish in the shark tank. We fight every day for our rights, our right to free speech, freedom of religion, and the freedom to "pursue life, liberty, and happiness"...until someone gets offended. We then find ourselves up to our necks in the ever so easy to file lawsuits.

We cannot pledge our allegiance to our own flag now. I like to use this phrase whenever a topic like this comes up: "Freedom, with their exception".

 

Leaving is the answer when you're surrounded by people unwilling to fight. People who have no conception of history and no understanding of the Constitution. I'm willing to fight, but I feel like I'm surrounded by people who just want to watch TV, use their computers, and leave the heavy thinking (actually all the thinking) to their leaders. People don't care at all about each other, and they don't care when the liberties and freedoms of others are threatened. They're content to wait until they're threatened, at which point it's too late for anything to be done.

When the first Americans established their county in the new land, they had a chance to start from scratch. They fought the war against their British masters and won the right to govern themselves. Well, guess what? This country is more oppressive now than England was then. Now, the only difference is there is no new land to conquer. People are soft, fat, and placated. It's like a zoo for humans.

I'm willing to fight. I have yet to meet someone else who is.

 

Malwaretesting, the founding fathers would never have broken off from England had they seen what was coming.

 

We all do what we can. Imagine if everyone was involved with an anonymity project. Or better yet, imagine if everyone used anonymity. These wiretaps would be fruitless and non-existent. You really would have already changed things.

legal != legitimate. What is legal is simply what a judge will put his name to. If we follow your corrolary that if the gov says it, it must be legit, then China executing its citizens or removing their organs and selling them, for religious beliefs, is legitimate. Then the genocide in Sudan is legitimate because it appears the government acts with complicity. They may be legal, but these things aren't legitimate, the are atrocities and crimes against humanity. The violation of privacy is also a crime against humanity as well. Without privacy, a human cannot develop into a person, only the shadow of one where they are afraid to say things, be seen a certain way, associate with whom they wish, etc.

 

I disagree. It shows that he actually cares about the issue, which I would say is a prerequisite to running a service like this. If he didn't care about privacy and these political issues at all, then I would say this was just a business to him. At that point, you might as well stick with the better judgment of your ISP.

But clearly there are bigger issues more important to him. So, that's a plus in my book.

Okay, this will be my last post as malwaretesting.

 

Peter, what you have to understand though, and what too many people miss, is that, like it or not, or believe it or not, technology is just as much politics as it is science. These "privacy" services were born and nurtured in intelligence labs to be able to carry out work without the "other side" being able to do it right back. Of course they found ways around it, it went back and forth, and the services you see and use today are as sophisticated as they are because of that back and forth fight.

What the governments of that time hadn't planned on and what us as the inhabitants of our individual countries weren't counting on, was our enemies being among us instead of operating against us from afar. We had spies, of course, but never the direct threat of terrorism on a daily basis as we do now, not only here in the U.S, but in other countries as well. We as the general population did not believe our governments would use the same techniques they use to keep track of and fight these threats against us, though we were foolish in that belief.

For the general population, these tools we now take for granted will be forbidden to use, in the name of national security not too much further into the future. I've said this before, but it's worth repeating to those that still refuse to understand, privacy, as we once knew it, is gone, and it isn't coming back. It's a two edged sword we're facing, we keep our privacy, we risk letting dangerous people fall through the cracks and Sept 11th repeats itself, if not much worse. We take away privacy, and it's a security risk because, then, anyone and everyone can find out about anyone and everyone, as they can now with the right resources.

This is no "one world government" conspiracy I'm trying to sell here, it's fact and in your face. Whether to ignore it and hope it goes away, or accept it, is strictly choice. Failure to address these issues in past decades and still relying on the resources of other countries has led us to the situations we are now facing, and, like all choices in life, there are consequences.