eBay to Feds: "Come and Get What You Want"

[Robb]

eBay to Feds: come and get what you want

Israeli daily Haaretz has unearthed highly embarrassing, and disturbing comments by an eBay executive. To an audience of law enforcement officials, eBay's Joseph Sullivan boasts that his company's privacy policy is meaningless.

"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told a closed-door session at the CyberCrime 2003 conference last week.

"When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site."

Law enforcement snoopers will have plenty of material to work with: Sullivan also boasts that eBay has logged every item of user information since 1995. eBay helps with over 200 a month, Haaretz reports.

(more)

[Eloriel]

1. Oh, boy!

That's quite a deal. Few people who are ebayers have much respect for ebay because they are such self-serving, arrogant, immoral, lying idiots, but THIS will go over like several tons of lead balloons among the ebay crowd.

Woooooeeeeeee.

Eloriel

[LeftCoast]

2. My partner was reading this over my shoulder

He Ebays fairly regularly...or at least he did. He's probably going to be dropping them now. He don't like this one bit.

[kittykitty]

3. Posted on eBay

an exerpt from the article and link on one of the discussion boards.

But they do state under Privacy:
We disclose limited personal contact information to verified requests by law enforcement and government officials who conduct criminal investigations, and require a subpoena for additional personal information, in accordance with our Privacy Policy."

The require a subpoena????

[Wwagsthedog]

4. This should scare people silly

Ebay is probably just one of many providers of customer information to government. It seems the only difference between them and others could be that they admit it. Consider that MBNA, for instance, is one of the biggest republican contributors as well as being one of the largest credit card companies. Why wouldn't they give up your buying history if asked? It certainly is cheaper than a donation.