
Yahoo, Verizon: Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, ‘Confuse’ Consumers - phsr
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/wiretap-prices/
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jrockway
Ironically, their claim that releasing the data would make them look bad makes
them look bad. Rather than giving us data that we could use to reach the
conclusion that they are bad, they simply said "we are bad" with no room to
argue. Brillant.

~~~
andreyf
I suppose it only makes sense if the data would make them look even worse...

~~~
Dilpil
But of course, this tells us that they are even worse than we thought, yet
they still haven't released it so they must be even worse than _that_ , and so
on and so forth.

~~~
ramidarigaz
So is that the definition of a race condition (in regards to parallel
programming)?

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nfnaaron
"He found that Cox Communications charges $2,500 to fulfill a pen
register/trap-and-trace order for 60 days, and $2,000 for each additional
60-day-interval. It charges $3,500 for the first 30 days of a wiretap, and
$2,500 for each additional 30 days. Thirty days worth of a customer’s call
detail records costs $40.

Comcast’s pricing list, which was already leaked to the internet in 2007,
indicated that it charges at least $1,000 for the first month of a wiretap,
and $750 per month thereafter."

Ah, now I see. It's a profit deal.

I suppose if the police just demanded the information free, the telcos would
cite the Constitution. But since they're paid ...

~~~
pyre
Huh? Those prices are for all taps. If a court orders a wiretap, how are
telcos supposed to resist, and on what grounds? "All wiretaps are illegal?"
This says nothing about how prevalent illegal wiretaps are.

There may be some profiteering going on here (see the discrepancies between
Comcast's prices and Cox's prices), but where is the illegality/immorality in
complying with a court-ordered wiretap and charging money so that each wiretap
doesn't end up costing your business money to implement?

~~~
nfnaaron
Sorry, I was sloppy. The more taps, the more profit. You can make more money
from warranted taps plus unwarranted taps, instead of just warranted taps.

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niallsmart
A fairly classic case of the Streisand effect. If Comcast and Cox already
agreed to the disclosure, why bother raising further attention to it?

~~~
jsm386
I don't think this really is a case of the Streisand effect: _The Streisand
effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece
of information backfires, causing the information to be publicized widely and
to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been
attempted._

Yahoo & Verizon aren't sending out lawsuits asking people to pull the
information. They are trying to block a FOIA request for information that is
not out there already.

As for Cox and Comcast, well, it sucks for them that Yahoo & Verizon decided
to fight when they didn't. At least they were honest about selling your
data...

~~~
ewjordan
_As for Cox and Comcast, well, it sucks for them that Yahoo & Verizon decided
to fight when they didn't. At least they were honest about selling your
data..._

To me the article reads as if these wiretaps are court ordered, which means
that it's unfair to call this "selling you data". Even if they are allowed to
charge a reasonable fee for the service, these companies have no legal means
to avoid responding to these requests, so I wouldn't blame them for any
abuses.

Which makes it all the more strange that two of them are fighting the release
of this data. Their refusal makes this into a bigger story than it would have
been otherwise, so any argument that they don't want to be publicly associated
with this type of thing doesn't hold much water.

Could be that the legal departments just hate releasing internal data of any
sort unless they're absolutely forced to, which is not altogether
unreasonable.

~~~
jsm386
I see what you're saying about it being unfair to call this selling data, but
I can't help but look it at that way when they are charging $2500 dollars and
up for tap. There is definitely a difference between being compensated for the
time it takes to do something and profiting off of it, regardless of whether
you had to do it or not.

~~~
scott_s
Do you know exactly what's involved in placing a single tap? I don't. That it
costs them $2500 in extra time across a large bureaucracy sounds reasonable to
me.

