Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!uw-beaver!cornell!wayner From: wayner@hermod.cs.cornell.edu (Peter Wayner) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Lotus Marketplace Keywords: CD-Rom consumer database,privacy Message-ID: <48514@cornell.UUCP> Date: 17 Nov 90 17:31:02 GMT References: <1990Nov16.205011.10348@uncecs.edu> <1990Nov17.074534.8751@looking.on.ca> Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Ithaca NY Lines: 115 brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >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 This is an _excellent_ point! One day, everyone is getting all excited because BellSomething didn't want Craig Neidorf keeping a document filled with information on their computers. The next day, we're getting all upset about Lotus selling information about our likes and dislikes to the world. There is a _fundamental_ problem here with our knee-jerk sympathies. The more I think about it, the more I begin to feel as if the notion of privacy in this case is a bit difficult to sustain. Say I run into someone on the street-- a perfectly public occasion. She might be wearing a Burberry's Raincoat and a Hermes scarf. From this I can immediately tell something about her income level and whether or not I, a mail-order leather biker clothes vendor, should send her a catalog. The same goes for the bum asking for change, the preppie running along the Charles River in Boston and the fan at the Celtics. If she is walking a dog, then I know she's a dog owner. And so on. If I follow her to the store, (a public act not governed by the warrant restriction of search) I can find out a bit more about her habits. The process of gathering data about someone's purchases and lifestyle minutae are really quite within the classic public domain. Heck, Sherlock Holmes would sit down next to someone and make absolute astonishing observations and draw conclusions. Everyone loved him, yet Lotus, which is just making everything smoother, quicker and more automated seems like an information-age nazi. Now, this argument is a bit specious because we are starting to see how some of the legal definitions of privacy conflict with the more intuitive notions. One of the Supremes said, I think, that privacy is really the right to be left alone. The ability to shut off the junk mail, the cold-callers and the relentless pitchmen of Madison Avenue. This is the psychological space that Lotus is violating. Of course, it might be interesting to take a Utilitarian view and wonder just what is the public good of having such a database floating around. One argument states that credit databases are great for the average, billpaying man because they reward the good with credit and punish the deadbeats. Thanks to this, I can walk up to some car dealer, say "I'll have one of those, and don't hold the chrome" and I'll be driving away after writing a check for $1,000 or so. He's run a check on me and found my word is pretty good. I certainly _like_ getting unsolicited catalogs that pander to my taste in the mail. It saves me the trouble of looking for that certain something I desire. It saves me from the blandness of the mall. It saves me from wasting gas and time. Heck, it makes me feel like a king when the merchants come a calling offering to deliver their wares to my door. Again, if I've been buying from "Leathers For All Weathers", I probably won't want to waste my time perusing a catalog from "Talbots." This whole thing reminds me of a girl I knew. When she would go to parties and spend her time fending off "geeks and computer nerds" she would come home and be totally upset about the attention. This sort of attention was, in her mind, just a slightly sublimated form of sexual harrassment. When they were acceptable men, though, she would coo and coo. So how are we going to go about defining "acceptable" data storage? Should we make all personalized solicitation (not just sexual, but all commercial) off-limits? One solution might be to prohibit any sort of solicitation that approaches groups smaller than a certain size, say 100 people. Anyone maintaining a database or selling lists of names that violate this precept would be publicly flogged like Michael Milken. This would cause a few problems in small towns. Perhaps. Then there is the question of free speech. Some sort of communication is being banned here and that makes people nervous. Well, the law could only be applied to corporations that are specifically "selling" or "soliciting." The goopy, "Gee Dad, I'm glad I'm doing great things for Dow Chemical" stuff could be let off. The current court has upheld the rights of governments to control the speech of corporations in a recent case about Michigan's proposal to limit campaign spending by corporations. (This was a weird split with Rehnquist taking the line that the corporations are legal creations of the government and therefore what the government gives the government can take away. Scalia took a more hard-line 1st ammendment approach. In the end, it was 5-4 I think. I'm not sure on this point.) So what does this boil down to? One suggestion for a law against solicitation and some ruminations that privacy isn't really anti-information as much as the right to be left alone. To blend in and feel the warmth of the crowd. Peter Wayner Department of Computer Science Cornell Univ. Ithaca, NY 14850 EMail:wayner@cs.cornell.edu Office: 607-255-9202 or 255-1008 Home: 116 Oak Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850 Phone: 607-277-6678