NPR gets it totally wrong
June 12, 2008 9:57 pm Legal, Technical, Utter BSNPR posted an absolutely terrible article on Charter’s wiretapping program today. Cyrus Farivar spends most of the piece drawing stupid comparisons to Google and Facebook, dedicating nary a word to Congressional interest and legal aspects of the topic. I guess maybe I just expect more out of NPR, but even the audio accompanying the story is bad. If anyone from NPR is reading this, you can contact me here when you’d like a coherent and thorough report on this case.
From the article:
[F]our years ago, when Google launched its free Web-based Gmail, a lot of people were concerned that Google would be scanning private e-mails to allow targeted ads. Today, most people don’t seem to mind so much and continue to use it. Just like Gmail, Blum says, some customers might not mind the more targeted ads.
Let me explain this again for Mr. Farivar and Mr. Blum:
What Google does is legal because the data they collect does not leave the company. Gmail users do not have their information sold to an advertising company because Google itself is the advertising company. As long as Google is competent enough to protect the data used to generate the advertising, which most reasonable people believe Google to be, then the privacy concern in their case is not as significant. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, and I’m not suggesting that what Google does is right (because it isn’t), but at least what Google does is legal, as it isn’t predicated on user data being sent into the wild.
Charter, on the other hand, is breaking several federal laws. As an ISP they are held to regulations which disallow them from collecting data from their customers outside of that which is legally mandated. There is very little comparison to be drawn between the program put forth by Charter and NebuAD and that run by Google.
Charter would not go on the record to discuss its upcoming ad program, but the company already makes it possible for customers to opt out.
Do they now? Perhaps the dozens of articles to the contrary should have been consulted prior to your submitting a report to NPR on the matter, Mr. Farivar.
At its core, Charter’s initiaive is about money, says Chris Hoofnagle, a privacy law expert at the University of California, Berkeley.
“ISPs have to find a way to become profitable,” says Hoofnagle. “And they need to find ways to generate revenue on top of merely connecting people to the Internet.”
I don’t think anyone has any problem with Charter finding new ways to make money. That’s what companies are supposed to do. Nobody is ever going to speak negatively of Charter for exploring new ways to make money, except when those ways stomp all over the very people responsible for their current income. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. Wait, no, it’s selling Peter’s personal information to a bunch of people on the Internet so that they can steal Peter’s identity for fun and for profit, from which you will receive a kickback which you then use to pay Paul. Or better yet, just forget Paul and give Ted Schremp a bigger bonus!
Indeed, a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission states that Charter is $20 billion in debt, has lost billions of dollars over the last three years, and adds that the company expects “to continue to incur net losses for the foreseeable future.”
I wasn’t aware of that. That’s the best news I’ve heard all week.