Damn!  

I look at ebay and those 30 round mag "kits," and shake my head at class 3 items, but are they forwarding all this info to Uncle Sam?  Does the .Gov profile anyone who is logged in to note what auctions they bid on, or even just look at?

From another bulletin board,

-------------------------------------------

Buyer Beware
   eBay Security Chief Turns Website Into Arm of the Law
   [url]http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&c=1&s=engle[/url]


   by Jonah Engle


   Speaking at a conference this winter on Internet crime, eBay.com's
   http://www.ebay.com/ director of law enforcement and compliance, Joseph
   Sullivan, offered law-enforcement officials extensive access to personal
   customer information.


   Founded in 1995 as a niche site for collectibles, eBay http://www.ebay.com/
   quickly grew into one of the Internet's largest websites, currently
   boasting 69 million daily visitors, who place an average of 7.7 million
   bids each day. The company, now valued at $29.6 billion, has become
   synonymous with online shopping, and is rapidly expanding overseas.


   The talk, "Working with Law Enforcement," was delivered at the CyberCrime
   2003 conference in Mashantucket, Connecticut. Sullivan, who left the
   Justice Department to become senior counsel for rules, trust and safety at
   eBay last year, told the audience of law-enforcement officials and industry
   executives that he didn't "know another website that has a privacy policy
   as flexible as eBay's," seemingly meaning that eBay acts particularly
   quickly to grant law enforcement extensive access to user information
   without regard to established legal procedures that protect individuals
   from civil rights abuses by the state.


   Brags Sullivan, "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." (eBay itself goes further than this, employing six
   investigators who are charged with tracking down "suspicious people" and
   "suspicious behavior.")


   Seventy percent of eBay customers, as well as a significant portion of the
   rest of the online commercial world, make their purchases using
   (eBay-owned) Paypal, which provides clearing services for online financial
   transactions. Through Paypal, eBay has access to the financial records of
   tens of millions of customers. "If you contact me," said Sullivan to
   assembled law-enforcement authorities, "I will hook you up with the Paypal
   people. They will help you get the information you're looking for.... In
   order to give you details about credit-card transactions, I have to see a
   court order. I suggest that you get one, if that's what you're looking for."


   Sullivan even offered to conscript eBay's employees in virtual sting
   operations: "Tell us what you want to ask the bad guys. We'll send them a
   form, signed by us, and ask them your questions. We will send their answers
   directly to your e-mail."


   Sullivan's statements were first reported by Yuval Dror in the Tel
   Aviv-based daily Ha'aretz; surprisingly, they have received no coverage in
   the US media. And, while they may seem extreme, Sullivan's eBay policies
   seem to fit into a larger pattern of eroding online privacy.


   I n the fall of 2001 a Stanford-educated Pakistani scientist, a permanent
   resident of the United States, was visited at his home in the Bay Area by
   the FBI, who asked about several books he'd recently purchased on eBay. The
   man's lawyer said the FBI agent reported having been alerted by eBay. eBay
   denied having provided the information to the FBI, and the bureau refused
   to comment.


   eBay avoids legal trouble with its customers by giving itself carte blanche
   to divulge any and all personal information. Its hard-to-find privacy
   policy says: "Due to the existing regulatory environment, we cannot ensure
   that all of your private communications and other personal information will
   never be disclosed in ways not otherwise described in this Privacy Policy."


   Until recently, in the Internet world "cooperation with government was seen
   as a betrayal of the unwritten contract between the user and service
   provider," says Nimrod Kozlovski of the Information Society Project, a
   Yale-based center that studies democracy and freedom in the digital age.
   This understanding held that the "provider would protect the consumer from
   government snooping." Kozlovski believes that "September 11th changed
   things dramatically," much as it did for privacy and civil-liberties issues
   in other realms. He observes that eBay followed the trend by rebranding
   itself and changing its privacy and policy statements "to accommodate this
   new vision of the company as one which was [not only] cooperative with the
   government [but] actually a private law enforcement entity." eBay has also
   felt the sting of tough new laws: On March 28 its unit PayPal was charged
   by the Justice Department with violating the Patriot Act for providing
   money transfer services to gambling companies. eBay may be wary of turning
   down law-enforcement requests, and in this political climate, being pliant
   to law enforcement may be sound business in the sense that it can lead to
   better treatment from government and lower administrative costs associated
   with a company's security division. There is also the genuine anxiety
   surrounding the potential consequences of not following up on a perceived
   terrorist threat.


   Company spokesperson Kevin Pursglove calls eBay "a pioneer when it comes to
   customer privacy" and denies that eBay's privacy rules are in any way
   influenced by increased concerns about homeland security or that eBay has
   been the subject of increased pressure from law enforcement.


   The attack on Internet privacy, like all civil liberties, has been growing
   since September 11 in the form of the Patriot Act and other federal and
   state-based legislation. Many provisions in the new laws undermine online
   privacy, and are in keeping with eBay's information-sharing policies. The
   Patriot Act allows ISPs to voluntarily hand over all "non-content"
   information to law enforcement without the need for a court order or
   subpoena. It also expands the category of information that law-enforcement
   figures can seek with a simple subpoena (no court review required) to
   include, among other things, IP addresses and credit card and bank account
   numbers.


   

While Sullivan's statements are the most extreme examples of the blurring
   between law enforcement and private corporations, eBay is not the only
   large online companies to have diluted its customer-privacy provisions.
   Traditionally, it was standard practice not to reveal customer information
   to third parties; now, however, Internet companies are making exceptions
   for the government. And massive online vendors from Travelocity to Amazon
   are using vague language to give themselves virtually complete discretion
   as to what customer information they will turn over to law-enforcement
   officials. Whether there will be a consumer backlash against these relaxed
   privacy policies remains to be seen.


   If so, then companies like eBay may have to question their current
   willingness to become quasi-private law-enforcement agencies themselves. In
   liberal democracies it is assumed that criminal investigation and law
   enforcement are the sole domain of government. But the trend in the United
   States, as evidenced by eBay, among many companies, now sees huge
   private-sector commercial entities becoming, in effect, agents of law
   enforcement. It's an arrangement between government and the private sector,
   which Kozlovski calls the "invisible handshake"--Internet companies promise
   to open their files to law enforcement, while law enforcement insures that
   citizens stay in the dark. This new relationship raises crucial questions
   regarding civic life in the United States, and our rights as citizens and
   consumers. According to Sullivan, "when someone uses [eBay's] 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..." Is this more than we bid for?

I posted an article about this a month ago and no one cared. They continue to do business through a service that admits to being big brother and turning in people, they FEEL are breaking the law, to the feds.

I've never done business through ebay before. Now I never will in the future.

I have done alot of business @ ebay. I won't be bidding on "questionable" items any more. Thanks for the heads-up.
AB

I don't do business on ebay. Of course I'm broke. But I have tried to get my family to not buy things on there.

Also I have canceled my PayPal account.

ED

ebay     [50]

I've weaned myself off ebay, too many jerks, theives, and for the most part ebay's no help resolving problems, better to do business personally, with board members with a track record or businesses. Ebay's hassle factor has exceeded my limit and their "self policing" is BS and I won't do business under somebody elses scrutiny who I'm sure hardly knows which end of a gun the bullet comes out of let alone what the laws actually are.

I couldn't find it in that article, but in the one I posted the guy who owns ebay prides himself in keeping copies of all sales and  buyer/seller correspondence sent through ebay ever since the start of the company.

And all these wonderful things are happening during whose administration and what political party does that wonderful person belong to?

(Just thought I'd ask!)