ISPs: The Tension Is Not Resolved
October 7, 2022
The deck is stacked against individual consumers, but sometimes the law favors them such as in a recent case in Maine. The Associate Press shared the good news in the story, “Internet Service Providers Drop Challenge Of Privacy Laws.” Maine has one of the strictest Internet privacy laws and it prevents service providers from using, selling, disclosing, or providing access to consumers’ personal information without their consent.
Industry associations and corporations armed with huge budgets and savvy lawyers sued the state claiming the law violated their First Amendment rights. A judge rejected the lawsuit, protecting the little guy. The industry associations agreed to pay $55,000 the state accrued protecting the law. The ACLU helped out as well:
“Supporters of Maine’s law include the ACLU of Maine, which filed court papers in the case in favor of keeping the law on the books. The ACLU said in court papers that the law was ‘narrowly drawn to directly advance Maine’s substantial interests in protecting consumers’ privacy, freedom of expression, and security.’
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills has also defended the law as “common sense.”
Maine is also the home of another privacy law that regulates the use of facial recognition technology. That law, which came on the books last year, has also been cited as the strictest of its kind in the U.S.”
This is yet another example of corporate America thinking about profits over consumer rights and protections. There is a drawback, however: locating criminals. Many modern criminal cases are solved with access to a criminal’s Internet data. Bad actors forgo their rights when they commit crimes, so they should not be protected by these laws. The unfortunate part is that some people disagree.
How about we use this reasoning: the average person is protected by everyone that participates in sex trafficking, pedophilia, and stealing tons of money are not protected by the law. The basic black and white text should do to the truck
Whitney Grace, October 7, 2022
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