SCN: What They Do Know Can Hurt You

[Brian High]

X-No-Archive: Yes

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         From the writer of "PGP: Pretty Good Privacy" (O'Reilly)
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http://www.thenation.com/issue/000228/0228garfinkel.shtml

February 28, 2000
PRIVACY AND THE NEW TECHNOLOGY
What They Do Know Can Hurt You
by SIMSON GARFINKEL

<snip>

The most important contribution of the Richardson report was a bill of
rights for the computer age, which it called the Code of Fair Information
Practices. The code is based on five principles:

§ There must be no personal-data record-keeping system whose very existence
is secret.

§ There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the
person is in a record and how it is used.

§ There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person
that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for
other purposes without the person's consent.

§ There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of
identifiable information about the person.

§ Any organization creating, maintaining, using or disseminating records of
identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their
intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuse of the data.


<snip>

One important step toward reversing the current direction of government
would be to create a permanent federal oversight agency charged with
protecting privacy. Such an agency would:

§ Watch over the government's tendency to sacrifice people's privacy for
other goals and perform governmentwide reviews of new federal programs for
privacy violations before they're launched.

§ Enforce the government's few existing privacy laws.

§ Be a guardian for individual privacy and liberty in the business world,
showing businesses how they can protect privacy and profits at the same
time.

§ Be an ombudsman for the American public and rein in the worst excesses
that our society has created.

Evan Hendricks, editor of the Washington-based newsletter Privacy Times,
estimates that a fifty-person privacy-protection agency could be created
with an annual budget of less than $5 million--a tiny drop in the federal
budget.

<snip>

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This article is adapted by permission from Database Nation: The Death of
Privacy in the 21st Century (O'Reilly). Simson Garfinkel is a columnist for
the Boston Globe and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society
at Harvard Law School.

Copyright ©2000 The Nation Company, L.P. All rights reserved. Unauthorized
redistribution is prohibited.

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