Time to update the anti-trust laws, Part 2
Lead Summary
By
-
By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist
As I stated in my previous column, it appears large corporations have, in most cases, figured ways around our antiquated anti-trust laws.
One of their favorite ways to do this is to have us do their work for them. From phone menu systems where we waste our time – not theirs – to self-checkout, where we do their job for them, they have turned our time into their profits. Nothing wrong with profit. I am a big fan of profit, but large corporations have found ways for us to forcibly give them our time for free, thus skirting any possible anti-trust calculation in the process.
In this column, however, I want to turn in another direction. This is directed toward the largest of companies – Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, Disney and others. I am talking about companies that control the content we see or track the places we have been. Google, Facebook, Samsung and Apple are at the top of this suspicious list, with the others just a little way behind.
The COVID-19 situation has given these companies popular (not legal) license to tromp on the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In some cases, it has been reported these companies have colluded, with governmental blessings in countries that do not have our Constitution and its amendment protections to do this overtly. Here, it is a bit more covert but takes place just the same.
Let us start with Amazon’s “Ring” doorbell/camera setup. You buy and install a Ring doorbell. Seems like a prudent personal security device in and of itself. If that is as far as it went, that would be fine. If a crime has occurred in a specific neighborhood, the law enforcement agency investigating may request videos that users may have recorded during a specific date and time within a certain geographic radius. According to Ring, it does not provide local police with information about its users unless a user decides to share video recordings with police, and then it is only the user’s email and location are disclosed.
The only problem is, you are now a potential suspect, whether you wanted to be or not. For if you happen to be walking by your neighbor’s house at the time of a crime, you could be scooped up and brought in for questioning, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
So, Jim, where is the anti-trust component? This is only one company. Well, it is and it isn’t, for all owners of Ring doorbells have an app, on either the Apple or Android system, to provide them with data about their doorbell. If you have an Apple or Android phone, and Apple or Samsung or others are tracking your whereabouts on your phone, it is an easy link to place your phone data within events recorded by the Ring system.
This may exonerate you or it may condemn you, or, more likely, it will leave you in a fuzzy place requiring you to become engaged with law enforcement and the legal system, just because you happened to take a midnight stroll through your neighborhood.
Other areas are more worrisome from a First Amendment point of view. Let me first say that companies like Google and Facebook have the right to show or not show whatever information they so choose to do. I uphold their right to be free enterprises in control of their destinies.
However, there is a fine line here, for they have become a public trust, just like the newspaper in which you read this column. We expect them to give us a straight story. Often they are withholding the straight story from us. Further, they are using so called “independent” fact checkers to deny stories to appear and to promote other stories.
These fact checkers cross company lines. They are nearly all of the same political persuasion and they have the same view of political rights and wrongs. They don’t have to do things in the open to steer narratives in the direction they want them to go, their ideologies make this happen automatically.
It is the same as in the days of old when two oil companies, or two steel companies, or two paper companies colluded on price. These parties did not have to have an obvious connection, all they had to have was the ability to signal each other of their intent, then they could make it happen to their advantage and to the detriment of the general public.
These modern-day behemoths are doing the same thing, only with thoughts, ideas and your personal information. They are colluding in ways that tromp on our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
The operative word in anti-trust discussions is “collusion.” It is not only money, which is how the current laws are focused. Anti-trust language needs to be rewritten and codified as collusion centric, not money centric before our rights are completely abrogated by large private enterprises.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.
HCP columnist
As I stated in my previous column, it appears large corporations have, in most cases, figured ways around our antiquated anti-trust laws.
One of their favorite ways to do this is to have us do their work for them. From phone menu systems where we waste our time – not theirs – to self-checkout, where we do their job for them, they have turned our time into their profits. Nothing wrong with profit. I am a big fan of profit, but large corporations have found ways for us to forcibly give them our time for free, thus skirting any possible anti-trust calculation in the process.
In this column, however, I want to turn in another direction. This is directed toward the largest of companies – Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung, Microsoft, Amazon, Disney and others. I am talking about companies that control the content we see or track the places we have been. Google, Facebook, Samsung and Apple are at the top of this suspicious list, with the others just a little way behind.
The COVID-19 situation has given these companies popular (not legal) license to tromp on the First and Fourth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In some cases, it has been reported these companies have colluded, with governmental blessings in countries that do not have our Constitution and its amendment protections to do this overtly. Here, it is a bit more covert but takes place just the same.
Let us start with Amazon’s “Ring” doorbell/camera setup. You buy and install a Ring doorbell. Seems like a prudent personal security device in and of itself. If that is as far as it went, that would be fine. If a crime has occurred in a specific neighborhood, the law enforcement agency investigating may request videos that users may have recorded during a specific date and time within a certain geographic radius. According to Ring, it does not provide local police with information about its users unless a user decides to share video recordings with police, and then it is only the user’s email and location are disclosed.
The only problem is, you are now a potential suspect, whether you wanted to be or not. For if you happen to be walking by your neighbor’s house at the time of a crime, you could be scooped up and brought in for questioning, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.
So, Jim, where is the anti-trust component? This is only one company. Well, it is and it isn’t, for all owners of Ring doorbells have an app, on either the Apple or Android system, to provide them with data about their doorbell. If you have an Apple or Android phone, and Apple or Samsung or others are tracking your whereabouts on your phone, it is an easy link to place your phone data within events recorded by the Ring system.
This may exonerate you or it may condemn you, or, more likely, it will leave you in a fuzzy place requiring you to become engaged with law enforcement and the legal system, just because you happened to take a midnight stroll through your neighborhood.
Other areas are more worrisome from a First Amendment point of view. Let me first say that companies like Google and Facebook have the right to show or not show whatever information they so choose to do. I uphold their right to be free enterprises in control of their destinies.
However, there is a fine line here, for they have become a public trust, just like the newspaper in which you read this column. We expect them to give us a straight story. Often they are withholding the straight story from us. Further, they are using so called “independent” fact checkers to deny stories to appear and to promote other stories.
These fact checkers cross company lines. They are nearly all of the same political persuasion and they have the same view of political rights and wrongs. They don’t have to do things in the open to steer narratives in the direction they want them to go, their ideologies make this happen automatically.
It is the same as in the days of old when two oil companies, or two steel companies, or two paper companies colluded on price. These parties did not have to have an obvious connection, all they had to have was the ability to signal each other of their intent, then they could make it happen to their advantage and to the detriment of the general public.
These modern-day behemoths are doing the same thing, only with thoughts, ideas and your personal information. They are colluding in ways that tromp on our First and Fourth Amendment rights.
The operative word in anti-trust discussions is “collusion.” It is not only money, which is how the current laws are focused. Anti-trust language needs to be rewritten and codified as collusion centric, not money centric before our rights are completely abrogated by large private enterprises.
Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press. He may be reached at jthompson@taii.com.