This author has done a great job of breaking down a difficult subject into a straightforward narrative.
He wrote this little masterpiece of summary and I provide it to you.
Please visit his web site and thank him for his effort.
James Pilant
via Skuggi_Net
Does an attorney violate client confidentiality by using public broadband? It appears so. There are clear implications for any profession in which confidentiality is a responsibility. Is this the first shot in a dispute about using public Internet access for professionals or all of us?
Maybe we should all be more aware of the risks to our own data?
Read this fascinating article on using the web and an attorney’s fiduciary duty.
James Pilant
On my regular commentators, Andrew, would like to add his thought to my previous post, “Law Prohibiting Price Gouging In Oklahoma (via 40/29 tv.com).”
I like the spirit of this law. It prevents unethical businesses from profiting from the misfortune of others.
Here’s a hypothetical situation. If Company “A” and Company “B” are both hardware stores in the same town when an emergency hits. Company “A” is owned by an unethical man who ratchets up his prices to make a buck off of the emergency. Company “B” is owned by an ethical man who keeps his prices steady (perhaps out of a sense of duty to his community, who knows). Now say I am a resident of this town. In the aftermath of this emergency, if I hear that Company B’s prices are lower than Company A’s, then I will prefer to do business with Company B. Thus, ideally, ethics will win out over greed.
This hypothetical only applies to situations where healthy competition is established in each market. If you live in a small town where there is only one hardware store or one grocery store, then the residents are at the mercy of the store owner.
So it seems that this law will definitely help out the small town folks, and I see nothing wrong with it at all.
Click on the link below to see the cartoon. It’s a good one. The battle over net neutrality illustrated. This is delicious. And it is accurate.
Fighting the net neutrality battle for a small blog seems almost hopeless but there a lot of us. We’re disorganized and highly independent. It doesn’t make for good group cohesion. But we have our anger and each of us has our own niche on the web. Maybe we can make some difference in this battle.
James Pilant
From the article by Stan Finger –
A half-dozen Wichita police officers are testing a new body camera system that records everything the officers see and do outside their vehicles.
The field tests began two weeks ago and will continue for another two weeks, Capt. Jeff Easter said Wednesday.
“Anything that they get out of the vehicle on, they’ll record,” Easter said of the officers. “Anything is evidence. You never know what’s going to happen in front of you when you get out on the scene.”
Early results are promising.
“It’s a very good system,” Easter said. “The video quality is amazing. It’s much better than any other camera system we’ve looked at in the past.”
The system is manufactured by Taser, which is letting Wichita police try it out. The head-mounted system resembles a Bluetooth and can also be attached to an officer’s hat or eyewear.
I’m a little surprised that the police are adopting these without any fuss. I have read and directly heard about the police disabling cameras. But apparently it has become a useful tool for the officer.
I’m a little more interested in what this means for the rest of us. I recognize that the technology is available to be purchased now but it is not the same. These things kick on every time an officer exits the car. They keep all of what is seen for a year. This is no short time surveillance camera in a tie. While we are not police officers whose department is willing to spend the $5,000 a year necessary, we will eventually be the beneficiaries of the technology. Soon at a reasonable price you will be able to make a record of everything you see 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It might be useful taking college classes or at a family reunion or in large scale use changing the social fabric of the nation.
Will all Americans adapt their behavior to an utterly continuous recording of themselves by countless others? What will be the long term social effects?
In terms of business ethics, what we have here is the private becoming public. Discussions, comments and negotiations will all be easily recorded in the most informal of circumstances with the ability to keep records for years. Is there a disclosure requirement? Is there going to be an unspoken agreement not to use these in negotiation? Can they be used in court? This kind of evidence could come back to bite you as long as it exists and eventually those records will exist for the course of our lives or longer.
Will states or the federal government regulate their use? That is an important question. There is some regulation of recording phone calls. The grounds for this is that there is no consent from one of the parties. That would be a similar justification for laws on continuous viewing by personal cameras.
These things worry me. We seem as a society to do things without discussion and debate. When we do it turns every single time into a debate over personal freedom versus government regulation whether or not these are significant factors in the issue. Every subject can be classified that way but that doesn’t mean it fits into that box. Surveillance is more of an issue of what can new technology do and “what the effects are.” What are the advantages of this technology? Does it conflict with our customs and morality? What effects will it have in different areas of endeavor; medical operations, trial, sports, sex, and countless others. Once we think about the effects then we can start putting it into legal or regulatory boxes. But in current discussion the boxes come first and we never do the often subtle thinking that allows humanity to make reasonable and intelligent decisions.
James Pilant
P.S.
I went to a “gadget site” on the web. I couldn’t get a price but the system ad read this way. I think you’re supposed to feel like Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible move.
This High Quality Body Camera set is ready for Covert Operations. This complete set is all you need. At a much better and higher resolution then our lower priced Body Cam, you get what you pay for. This is the best there is. Camera is powered by the DVR unit itself so there is no stupid 9 volt batery to weight you down.
This article focuses on the key issue in the FCC ruling. The issue is whether or not the decision actually favors consumers.
I hold the FCC decision in contempt. I do not believe it protects the interests of consumers because it will allow charges for using larger amounts of bandwidth when there is no shortage. Further, the FCC under these rules can only respond to complaints. The FCC does not enforce the rules without customers asking it do so in individual cases. Responding to complaints sounds good until you look at what happens with a complaint. If my web site is discriminated against and my loading time dramatically increased, I will only get redress after a lengthy complaint process. By the time that is completed, I would no longer have a successful blog. It’s the same with anybody else. The Internet is a fast moment by moment product. A complaint system is a post destruction remedy that does in no way mitigate the damage.
This is a good blog entry that asks who does the decision really benefit. If you are interested in a deeper understanding of this issue, I would read the article.
James Pilant
Does this level of mistrust damage our society? It should be obvious, that people don’t invest with people they don’t trust. And I find it hard to believe these numbers aren’t reflected overseas.
What about a nation where the major institutions are held in widespread contempt? Congress, the courts, state governments, the health care system – would you feel comfortable running any of them in popularity contest?
What about corporations? From the article –
Big corporations fared the worst in the survey, with just 13 percent of Americans saying they trust these major businesses. That’s the same level as the first quarter of last year and down from the middle of 2010.
The stock market also isn’t high on Americans’ list of trusted organizations, with just 16 percent of Americans saying they trust that institution. Again, that’s the same percentage as last March.
Banks and mutual funds fared better, at 43 percent and 31 percent, respectively. Among all the components of the index, the banking system has seen the biggest percentage gain in trust this year.
This is a very serious matter. These levels of distrust, probably even hatred, are reflected in actions. Could the idea that vaccinations caused autism have gained traction without widespread distrust of the pharmaceutical industry? Children have died because of the lower rate of vaccinations.
These are not signs of a healthy society. They are the signs of a distressed society, a society where things no longer work. Trust abandonment can manifest in many ways. Most likely, we will see more and more political volatility.
Elections will be won by groups who claim to have all the answers. When they fail to deliver, they will be thrown out in mass. Election victories will go more and more to extremists. And when those winners fail to deliver, there will be another cycle where they are thrown out. It will make stability impossible and each cycle will further radicalize the nation.
We are already seeing the embrace of abandoned ideas and discredited ideologies. Of course, the system may return to stability for any of wide number of factors. But I don’t think so. The mistrust, the hatred, is too deep.
James Pilant
Student loans are how most American students finance their education. They seldom have any other choice. This article I am quoting comes from Edufactory. It is interesting web site. It looks at the world from the vantage point of a college student, more European than American. But I like to hear what Europeans have to say about U.S. issues. I find the common thought pattern of the “beltway boys” to be irritating. This is a very large article. This is the opening.
Debt has had a crushing impact on the lives of those who must take student loans to finance their university education in the US. For tuition fees that have been so notoriously high in private universities now are rising in public universities so quickly they are far out-pacing inflation. Student loan debt in the US has been much higher than in Europe (with the exception of Sweden), though recent developments there would indicate that this gap may soon no longer exist (Usher).
We should also take into account the fraudulent way in which the loans have been administered by the banks and the vindictiveness with which those who have been unable to pay back have been pursued by collection agents. The most frustrating aspect of student loan debt being the legally toothless position the debtor is in, because government policy has relentlessly vested all the bargaining power in the hands of the creditors.
Student loans are a strange philosophical creature here at the beginning of the 21st century. Daily, the newspapers and television are filled with talk about the need for highly educated workers. States with low ratios of college graduates to the general population are considered poor sites for new factories and development. A nation’s competitiveness, perhaps in the long term, its very existence, may depend on the level of education of its population.
So, how does discouraging people from going to college make sense? Isn’t that a form of slow societal suicide?
And what is the effect on those who bear that debt for decades? It’s pretty obvious it forces students away from any job that isn’t well paid. That debt makes sure that the debtor works all the time, year after year. It never stops. There is no opportunity to write that novel, travel or simply live a life free from constant financial pressure.
Why do we finance education this way? The philosophy of secure investment and low interest rates, a product of the Chicago School of Economics, epitomized by the policies of the International Monetary Fund are the root cause. To make investments maximally secure, government spending must be minimized and wage pressure limited. Spending must be limited because taxation, any taxation, for any purpose is inimical to maximum profit. Wage pressure produces inflation which reduces the value of debt. If debt decreases in value, once again, investment security is threatened. Therefore expenditures on education must be carefully limited.
Of course, from a banking stand point, subjecting millions of Americans to continuous debt during the entire course of their lives with the full support of the federal and state government to collect the money might seem advantageous.
Many of you have already realized the problem with this. In the long term, investments in a nation with a gradually decreasing educational level endangers investment. That is easily explained. You are only damaged by a poor long term investment, if once you have maximized profit you can’t move your investment elsewhere. When the United States becomes unprofitable, the money will simply move. By then the process can go on in, perhaps, Russia or some country in Western Europe.
Americans to preserve their country’s international standing, future prosperity and in the long term the existence of the nation might want to consider how to maximize the graduation rate as well as prioritizing the fields where we want graduates. Training tens of thousands of students each year in broadcast journalism when there are only a few openings does no one any good except those holding the educational loans.
Let’s read a bit more from the article –
As typical of “invisible” movements, statistics fail us in drawing its proportions. We have no estimate, for instance, of how many have been driven to suicide or how many have been forced to go into exile due to their student debts. Nor do we have a measure of the social impact of the growing de-legitimation of the student debt machine. We can only speculate about the consequences of disclosures concerning the collusion between the university administrations (especially in the case of “for profit” institutions) and the banks, now commonly acknowledged in the media as well as in congressional investigations. For sure, blogs and web-groups are forming to share experiences and voice anger about student loan companies like the biggest one, the Student Loan Marketing Association (nicknamed “Sallie Mae”). On Google alone, there are about 9,000 entries under the rubric “Sallie Mae Sucks,” and another 9,000 under “Fuck Sallie Mae.” Browsing through the chat rooms, with their harrowing stories of wrecked lives and mounting frustration against the operations of Sallie Mae, makes it clear that the potential for a debt abolition movement is high. So far, however, most attempts that have been made to give an organizational form to this anger have largely demanded the application of consumer protection norms to the management of the debt.
Student loans may well be justified as part of the mix that pays for education. But it should be determined at what level it deters significant numbers from college. It should be determined when it goes to institutions primarily set up to collect that money with little benefit from the education paid for. The proportion of the educational expense paid for these loans increases year by year. Is that healthy for the educational system in the long term or for the citizens in this country?
It takes intelligence to make good decisions about what we as a nation need from education. It takes intelligence to measure the effects of this debt on the society as a whole. It takes intelligence to challenge the strange doctrines of the Chicago School and its many adherents.
I don’t see our leadership rising to the challenge.
James Pilant
On occasion I am told by a student or layman that a business has a right to charge as much as they can get. As to rights, I generally prefer to think of the rights of free speech and religion. As to squeezing customers’ wallets as much as possible, this article below should attract a little attention.
James Pilant
Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt says a state law to prohibit price gouging during an emergency is now in effect.Pruitt said the Emergency Price Stabilization Act went into effect statewide after Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency Monday ahead of Tuesday’s winter storm.The law prohibits price increases of more than 10 percent on most goods and services when a state of emergency is declared and remains in effect on the price of goods, services, storage spaces and dwellings for 30 days after the emergency. It remains in effect for 180 days after the emergency on the prices of repairs, remodeling and construction.
This Part 1 is the intriguing first shot across the bow to get our attention. It explains the developing crisis in state run universities.
What Kiser has said so far has definitely caught my interest. I’ve read this one and I’m looking for part 2.
This is going to be interesting. I think you will enjoy it as well. So, read this one and then catch the number 2 article when it comes. While you are at this, it might be a good idea to favorite the site. There might be a part three. Besides, you’d enjoy reading the site regularly. I do.
James Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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