The big online privacy story of the week—that broadband Internet Service Provider Comcast Corp. was tracking its customers’ web usage—was covered by all the major mainstream news organizations. The first report I saw was an Associated Press account in the Washington Post. Most of the other mainstream media accounts were similar in their breathless tone:
“Comcast Corp., the Washington region’s dominant cable company, has begun tracking the Web-browsing activities of its 1 million high-speed Internet subscribers without notifying them.”
The problem is that ledes like the one above from the AP story that populated most of the accounts are all inaccurate at best and intentionally misleading at worst. As it turns out, Comcast notified its customers in its subscriber agreement and privacy policy before the information about their web usage was collected. The usage information was reviewed in aggregate form for the sole purpose of network performance management.
The usual suspects, including Representative Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts), were knee-jerk quick to jump to the wrong conclusions and were of a single mind in pinging privacy experts to universally condemn Comcast’s actions.
Declan McCullagh was apparently the only journalist to follow up with Comcast on the issue, and obtained permission to publish the company’s terms of service agreement. The agreement specifically permits the data collection performed by Comcast. The solution for Comcast customers concerned about the data collection is to find another service provider.
In a much more troubling report, Salon published a story about the U.S. government demanding that bookstores disclose the book purchasing habits of their customers. This story has been largely ignored in the mainstream media and has implications for both privacy and First Amendment rights. “If we allow law enforcement access to customer records whenever they think it’s convenient, customers won’t feel secure purchasing books and magazines that are their constitutional right to buy,” Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression told Christopher Dreher in the Salon piece. If customers are concerned about bookstores turning their purchase information over to the government, they’re less likely to purchase controversial or dissenting material. What customers are likely to buy—and more importantly, what they’re not likely to buy—has a tremendous impact on what kinds of material gets published.
For years, law enforcement agencies tried to gain access to library records, and as a result 48 states restrict the information libraries can disclose about their patrons’ reading habits. Such protections generally do not extend to bookstores.
This exemplifies the dangers inherent in pack journalism and the risk of missing the big story for the sake of a smaller, easier one.
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