Originally Posted by
Trollkiller
A customer can sue an airline for disclosure if the customer feels they have been harmed, just as they could sue a telecom. The fact that the disclosure is NOT mandatory by statute was the whole purpose for the carve out legislation.
If the government could create a law that would shield a business from civil suits the cooperation from those companies would increase.
You seem to be contradicting yourself. The carve-out legislation was aimed at protecting the telcos from customer lawsuits because they shared customer information without a warrant. If such disclosures are already discretionary, then there wouldn't be any grounds for suit or need for a shield law.
Originally Posted by
Trollkiller
BTW a bank, broker, agent, or sales clerk can legally cooperate with police without warrants.
If you can find supporting case law or statutes please post them.
Co-operate? Sure. Reveal private or privileged information? No. The police, acting on tip that OBL is hiding in upstate New York and is known to have a haemorrhoid problem, can walk into a pharmacy, show a picture of OBL, and ask, "has this guy been in here?" But that doesn't mean they can say, "give us all the names of your customers who have bought haemorrhoid creme in the last six months." If the police got my name that way and came knocking on my door looking for OBL, I'd be suing the pharmacy. At my company or any other, the response to such a request would be, "We'd be happy to provide that information upon production of a warrant."