I don't think this really is a case of the Streisand effect: The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be publicized widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no censorship had been attempted.
Yahoo & Verizon aren't sending out lawsuits asking people to pull the information. They are trying to block a FOIA request for information that is not out there already.
As for Cox and Comcast, well, it sucks for them that Yahoo & Verizon decided to fight when they didn't. At least they were honest about selling your data...
As for Cox and Comcast, well, it sucks for them that Yahoo & Verizon decided to fight when they didn't. At least they were honest about selling your data...
To me the article reads as if these wiretaps are court ordered, which means that it's unfair to call this "selling you data". Even if they are allowed to charge a reasonable fee for the service, these companies have no legal means to avoid responding to these requests, so I wouldn't blame them for any abuses.
Which makes it all the more strange that two of them are fighting the release of this data. Their refusal makes this into a bigger story than it would have been otherwise, so any argument that they don't want to be publicly associated with this type of thing doesn't hold much water.
Could be that the legal departments just hate releasing internal data of any sort unless they're absolutely forced to, which is not altogether unreasonable.
I see what you're saying about it being unfair to call this selling data, but I can't help but look it at that way when they are charging $2500 dollars and up for tap. There is definitely a difference between being compensated for the time it takes to do something and profiting off of it, regardless of whether you had to do it or not.
Do you know exactly what's involved in placing a single tap? I don't. That it costs them $2500 in extra time across a large bureaucracy sounds reasonable to me.
Even though CALEA is legal and pretty reasonable IMO, I wouldn't put it past some muckraking bloggers to push the "Verizon is making money by spying on you, switch to $SOME_OTHER_TELCO" (which they won't mention is also CALEA compliant).
The Streisand Effect has more to do with calling attention to something with your efforts to suppress it. The fact that they are trying to block the FOIA requests is putting the spotlight on themselves in a greater way than just releasing the information would have.
The Streisand Effect as defined by Wikipedia is the same thing. People set up mirrors and spread it all over the place in reaction to the the heavy-handed attempts to suppress it because: 1) people are rebelling against the heavy-handed attempts to censor the information and 2) the heavy-handed attempts to suppress the information call greater attention to the information in the first place (i.e. more people hear about it and join in on the attempts to spread/mirror the information). The effects of (1) wouldn't be so great without the effects of (2).
In this case, the actual information isn't out in the wild, but the attempts to block the price lists from being released are drawing greater media attention to the FOIA requests.
Yahoo & Verizon aren't sending out lawsuits asking people to pull the information. They are trying to block a FOIA request for information that is not out there already.
As for Cox and Comcast, well, it sucks for them that Yahoo & Verizon decided to fight when they didn't. At least they were honest about selling your data...