Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!maytag!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Lotus Marketplace
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 90 07:45:34 GMT
Message-ID: <1990Nov17.074534.8751@looking.on.ca>
References: <1990Nov16.205011.10348@uncecs.edu>
Keywords: CD-Rom consumer database,privacy

This brings up what I feel is one of the most interesting questions of
the electronic frontier.

We are pulled in two different directions.

On one hand, we have deep concern on how the government might regulate
our use of computers and what we will do with them -- what information
we will collect, what we will share, what we will publish.  We fear a
bureaucracy and invasions of our homes by armed goons on strange
pretexes.

At the same time, we call for protection of privacy, and strict regulation
of what people can store about us on computers, what databases can be
merged and what can be done with that information.

We fear big institutions most, but even today the technology exists for
an individual to have a database more extensive than Lotus' Marketplace.

Can we have both regulation of what you can do with a computer and freedom
to do what you will with your computer?

If so, how?

If not, which one do we want more?  How much of the other do we give up?
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473