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Re: [OM] eBay and privacy article

Subject: Re: [OM] eBay and privacy article
From: "tOM Trottier" <Tom@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 17:08:18 -0400
Altho I'm a pretty fierce privacy advocate, as an eBayer buying photo gear, I 
can appreciate eBay's cooperation with fraud squads. 

I'd be more worried if I were buying political books, encryption hardware, anti-
spy devices, and such, or if the info about all my purchases were being sent to 
the same FBI squad that accused Earth First's Judy Bari of bombing herself. 
(See http://mediafilter.org/MFF/S37/S37cointelpro.html )

I like it when the police are protecting me, but not when they are protecting 
corporations against non-violent protesters.

And I wish eBay would pay some (any!) attention to my complaints!

tOM

On Monday, July 07, 2003 at 13:34
Moose <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Interesting article. My take on it is somewhat different than the slant 
> the article takes. Certainly there are privacy issues, but there is 
> something else rather positive for *Bay users going on as I see it.
> 
> *Bay is a little like the wild west, a big, wide open place with a lot 
> of money flying around and lots of potential ways to try to get hold of 
> some of it illegitimately. So this new guy from tradidional law 
> enforcement comes on board. He looks around and sees a couple of things: 
> limited budget and resources vs. seemingly unlimited and persistant 'bad 
> guys' and a whole lot of rather traditional scams being played out in a 
> new venue. He also sees that crimes that would be handled by the public 
> sector law enforcers for bricks and mortar businesses are not being 
> handled by them on the net.
> 
> So what does he do? He goes on a conscious campaign to recruit 
> traditional law enforcers to help police his virtual commercial world. 
> After all, there is real merchandise being traded for real money by real 
> people who have knowable addresses in the real world. And fraud is 
> fraud, and theft is theft, etc. How many stories on this list alone have 
> we heard about money or merchandise lost and the difficulty of 
> determining which venue has jurisdiction and getting them interested, 
> etc. etc.?  So the cops go into a pawn shop to get the address of the 
> guy who pawned your camera. Think they need a warrant to get the guy's 
> address? That's what this guy is offering. He wants to bridge the gap 
> and help law enforcement adapt to the internet. So what's he going to do 
> at their convention, tell them it's a tough job, but they should 
> perservere? Or tell them how easy it will be and how anxious the natives 
> are to help them do their job?
> 
> Sure, we need to be alert to abuses of our privacy. On the other hand, 
> we have just had threads about obviously fraudulent behavior where 
> *Bay's limited powers, like banning members, clearly don't work. Sounds 
> like this guy is no dummy and may 'clean up Dodge'.
> 
> Moose
> 
> tOM Trottier wrote:
> 
> >http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=engle---- 
----  Abacurial Information Management Consultants ----
Tom A. Trottier, President              http://abacurial.com
758 Albert St, Ottawa ON Canada K1R 7V8 
N45.412 W75.714 +1 613 860-6633 fax:+1-270-596-1042
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little 
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
        -- Benjamin Franklin


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