I don’t know about other sections of the country, but local media here in Atlanta has been abuzz about Spokeo.com, an Internet website that promises to give you access to the 411 on any and everybody for a monthly fee of $2.95. A cousin of mine gave me the heads up last night and local CBS affiliate Channel 9 ran a story this morning.

The company, according to its website, aggregates public records and provides access to information on a person’s wealth, income, e-mail address, property address, telephone number, and social networking information. They also provide subscribers with access to photos that someone may have placed on their social network page.

This is a private investigator and divorce lawyer’s dream come true. For a nominal fee, these guys can really get into your business.

The concept overall is not new. A number of websites have been providing subscribed access to aggregated information for years. What is scary here is that Spokeo appears to be able to access social networks to get information in addition to what is in a court record.

If that is truly the case, I wonder what that would do to Facebook’s valuation? If people are afraid to provide Facebook with all that cheap content in fear that Spooky-O is going to get a hold of it, then Facebook’s value should be taking a dip south. Then again, we’ve seen stranger things and it will be interesting to see how this plays out if people start opting out.

FierceWireless.com predicts that wireless carriers such as Verizon Wireless will challenge the Federal Communications Commission’s recently released net neutrality rules. I agree with FierceWireless.com. While wireless companies are expected to treat content providers on a nondiscriminatory basis, they will not be subject to the onerous, busy-body network management rules that their fixed wire brethren must abide by.

If I were a broadband access provider of any ilk, my argument would be two-fold. One, I’m not a media company. You, FCC, regulate the content of potty-mouthed radio disc jockeys and television broadcast networks that show the exposed bosoms of R&B singers during Super Bowl half-times.

We broadband access providers don’t create messages. We are more like paper boys with a bicycle route. Just like the little boys on their bikes and bigger boys in their vans deliver the printed versions of newspapers, we merely deliver the digital versions of said newspapers. Are you willing to tell me, FCC, that it would be okay for the Atlanta Voice to demand that paper boys deliver their paper on the same priority of a much larger Atlanta Journal Constitution? Should the paper boy delay the delivery of the more widely read AJC so that the smaller Atlanta Voice can be delivered on time?

Worse yet, would we allow subscribers to examine how the paper boy delivers his papers, including his schedule for inflating his tires and whether he has a five-speed bike versus a three-speed hand me down?

I don’t think so.

Critics of the proposed Comcast and NBC Universal joint venture have been making the argument that such an arrangement, between a large distributor of video programming and other content and a large content provider, would dampen our ability to fully participate in our great democracy.

I agree that the public should remain suspect of the media and its influence on our ability to keep government accountable. The traditional and major news sources also spend too much time being duplicative. ABC gives me the same old information that CBS gives me. I mean, how many times do I have to hear that the captain of the Enterprise got busted or that John Boehner is a cry baby. The information they provide does not appear very diverse.

And yes, there are a small number of large news organizations that appear to have a lock on the voices being heard on the airwaves. The alphabet soup includes CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CNBC, and Bloomberg.

But even with an apparent dearth of news outlets, am I ready to throw in the towel on democracy? Of course not.

There is no lack of information. There is a dearth of citizen accountability for going after information. We choose and find excuses for being spoon-fed. If we can’t get the news and a Katie Couric smile in 24 minutes, we move on to Facebook and end up spending more than 24 minutes on-line. Between the libraries of our state universities and our public libraries, we have access to lots of information about how our government runs.

With the information that we glean from alternative sources, we can resort to the tried and true methods of message transmission, letter writing, phone calls, and personal visits, to influence the policy decisions of our representatives. The hang-up that critics like Free Press have is really not with democracy. It’s with the use of one medium, namely the Internet, by content providers.

The Internet is sexy, and gets sexier with every new app, blog, and social media network that gets its hooks into it. It’s the fear of “gatekeepers” like Comcast relegating these content providers to the back of the bus and forcing them to pay to play that has critics scared. They could care less about our ability to impact our representative government as long as the pipes on the Internet are clear enough to allow them to send out their messages.

In an information society with access to probably too much information, the real threat to democracy is not whether Comcast will allow me to go to Color of Change’s website. It’s whether Americans will take the time to pursue good information, no matter the source of the content or distribution, and use it.

Just read FCC v. AT&T, 582 F3^rd 490, United States Court of Appeals-3^rd Circuit. The court remanded this case back to the Federal Communications Commission to determine whether disclosure of certain e-mails, names, other documents to the FCC by AT&T would amount to an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

The court held that the personal privacy exemption under the Freedom of Information Act was also applicable to AT&T because corporations were defined as persons under the statute. It appears instead that the FCC would rather the U.S. Supreme Court (see docket no. 09-1279) define once and for all what an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy is and more importantly clarify that FOIA defines corporations as persons.

That’s fine by me. A decision in favor of AT&T would pay dividends for broadband access providers. Even if net neutrality is not codified by statute (which it won’t be), being able to claim that a broadband access provider is exempt from providing requested information to third parties during a law enforcement action is a positive benefit not only to companies but also to their subscribers.

Times like these make me want to head out and get a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. According to a report in Tech Daily Dose, the American Civil Liberties Union believes proposed net neutrality rules that would bar traffic discrimination by Internet access providers are essential to protecting First Amendment rights.

First Amendment rights? For who? The electrons that run across a cable? Give me a break.

First, let’s look at what the First Amendment says. “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech …“ In other words, before we go around yelling freedom of speech violation, we have to look for some state-sponsored act that shortens, curtails, or diminishes one’s freedom of speech.

Internet access providers are not agents of the state. Their exercise of business judgment in determining whether traffic that is being used to perpetuate a crime or is otherwise harmful to the network is not the type of act that arises to state action.

I have to wonder why the ACLU is so caught up in how a message or speech is delivered versus the expression of speech itself. The Constitution does not favor a method of speech delivery over another. Just because one mode of sending information provides an edge over other modes, is that enough to create a compelling state interest in promoting laws and rules that take away a company’s right to manage its network?

I would say that the ACLU needs to stick with what it’s good at, but since they seem to have forgotten how to read the Constitution, they are basically not good at much of anything.