
US carriers illegally sold 911 location data - 8bitsrule
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/att-t-mobile-sprint-reportedly-broke-us-law-by-selling-911-location-data/
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erentz
I honestly don’t understand the process by which someone at these carriers
proposed this as a product and somehow it was all approved and the carriers
decided this was a good thing to do. How much revenue did selling this data
provide them? It surely can’t be much.

(I get it could’ve been worth more if they provided it to ad networks somehow
but that doesn’t seem to be the case according to the articles.)

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elliekelly
It got approved because the FCC, as a regulatory body, has no teeth. The
largest-ever fine issued by the FCC was $120 million. Their attorneys probably
put the total regulatory risk of non-compliance at around $1 million.

According to the article they were charging up to $1,100 per phone for the
location data.

So if they sold data on 1,000 customers they're in the black on the program
even after they deal with the regulatory "headache."

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MiddleEndian
This is why there should be criminal charges. They can eat cash penalties but
people generally prefer to stay out of prison.

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nikonyrh
Maybe they should have GDPR-like fines (I am not saying that GDPR it self is
good!): "In some cases, violators of the GDPR may be fined up to €20 million
or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year
in case of an enterprise, whichever is greater."

AT&T's revenue is 170.756 billion so the fine would be up to 6830 million
dollars, or almost 7 billion dollars.

Maybe this kind of threat would stop them from selling this private data.

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jgaa
I think the best way to stop people from doing bad things is personal
accountability.

If a company deliberately break the law, why not send those who decided to to
that, the CEO and the chairman of the board to prison?

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krageon
First and foremost I think it is a cultural problem. This behaviour is seen as
"just what people do" and therefore we _must_ punish it otherwise it will
_never_ go away. I don't disagree that punishment is something that is
warranted, but I also think that maybe it is time to take a deep hard look at
why this behaviour is so prevalent.

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closeparen
We are all up in arms about modern tech companies “selling data” by offering
targeted ad placement. I propose that this outrage properly belongs with older
and more traditional institutions, from your telco to your supermarket, who
are _literally_ exchanging spreadsheets of personal data for money.

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sitkack
How about prosecuting all those involved with illegal wiretapping?

