undefined | Better HN

0 pointsdanShumway6y ago0 comments

> You could sure them under wiretapping laws of they did.

Has this ever worked though? Cursory searching, I don't see or know of any examples of lawsuits that have actually succeeded on this front. And it's not like ISPs have never given consumers an opportunity before.[0]

[0]: https://www.cnet.com/news/verizon-draws-fire-for-monitoring-...

0 comments

AstralStorm6y ago

The cases are almost always settled for reasons I outlined in response to another thread. (mostly related to peering and PR damage, that can kill an ISP)

The app is a tiny blip on the radar waiting for careless. (Read the darn contact, especially if you get a discount.)

danShumwayOP6y ago

You're not exactly boosting my confidence here.

The easy sniff-test for whether or not existing laws are enough to dissuade an ISP from building user profiles is to check to see if it was enough in the past to stop them from doing so.

Do we have any cases of where an ISP broke wiretapping laws and was punished severely enough in a settlement or trial that it either killed the ISP or forced them to restructure or rebrand?

If ISPs can pull off highly profitable abuses and get away with it by just settling when they're called out, that's no guarantee that they aren't going to do the same thing in the future. Verizon bragged that they broke wiretapping laws in 2012. How are they doing now? Still struggling to recover from that, I would expect?

Certainly not selling real-time location data to bounty hunters.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse