Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!emory!rsiatl!jgd From: jgd@rsiatl.UUCP (John G. DeArmond) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: Lotus Marketplace Message-ID: <5010@rsiatl.UUCP> Date: 20 Nov 90 10:10:25 GMT Organization: Rapid Deployment Systems, Inc. (making go fast things and things go fast) Lines: 140 howell@grover.llnl.gov (Louis Howell) writes: >I think we're going to have to face a simple choice between two >not-so-distant futures. Either we will live in a police state, or >in a goldfish bowl. It is becoming too easy for government, corporations, >and ultimately individuals to copy and process all kinds of information. >We can place any limitations on government we want to, and we can limit >the ways that private parties can USE certain kinds of information, but >the only way we can regulate the FLOW of information is by massive >surveillance and censorship. Not at all. Here's how to do it without a police state. The concept is to put the onus of proving that it is NOT violating our rights onto the entity that proposes to push the privacy envelope. Here's how: * Make it illegal to use personal or corporate information for any activity that has the potentional to violate the target's privacy rights without the express written consent of the target. Spell such activities out in excrutiating detail if you wish - gives the Congressional Record something to print, after all. * Allow one exception and that is the effort necessary to seek permission from the target. If a person or corporation wants to authorize a blanket use for a catagory, clearing houses similiar to the Copyright Clearing House can catalog those names. Or if you want to allow the information on your business card to be placed in customers' rolodex (electronic or otherwise), simply print the permission statement on the card. * Permit only mailed requests for permission from strangers which would stop the boilerooms that would instantly pop up otherwise. It would be up to the target to determine whether a requestor is a stranger. Require that this request for permission be decoupled from any other requirement. This would prevent a hospital, for example, from requiring a release to a medical database as a condition for treatment. * Catagorize the permission into easily recognized catagories such as direct mail, release to the government, etc. * Set up a fund, initially seeded from tax funds but sustained from fines, that pays a flat fee for an attorney to prosecute a violation. Stipulate in the law that all that is necessary to prove violations is evidence that it occured and from where. No looking at intent or other time consuming evidence. Provide fixed fines that cannot be modified by the court for each violation. $50,000 seems about right. In the event that the government is the violator, hold the individual within the government liable. Designate fixed portions of the fine to go to the fund and to the victim. * Pierce the corporate veil in the event the violator is a sham or bankrupt corporation with no assets. Provide for the seizure of all personal assets of the officers involved to satisfy the fine. * Administer the program through the IRS (they know how to go for blood) and computerize the entire administrative process with a standard reimbursement form that must be signed by the victim, the attorney, and a magistrate, which would authorize the transfer of funds as specified. Consider some aspects of this proposal: * It creates little in the way of new bureauracracy. * It involved the government ONLY in punative situations. * It does not try to directly ban a practice, which we know to be impossible from observing the drug-sponsored war on the Constitution. * It does not try to ban the possesion of data, which we also know is impossible. It instead severely punished the abuse of said data. * It puts the full clout of the government behind the little guy who is most likely to be damaged by violations of this law. Is this tougher 'n hell? Yep. Will it make life hard on the data collectors? You bet! Will it provide extreme incentive to toe the line? Hell yes. Not only are the penalties consistent with punishment for lesser crimes such as certain RICO violations, it harshly regulated an industry wtih an overwhelming potential to harm large numbers of citizens. We've accepted such harsh regulations for much less harmful activities such as liquor stores, shooting ranges, and racetracks so why not a truely harmful activity? I certainly see no police state here. The program requires no action of the government or the people and only swings into action when an alledged violation takes place. And it punishes the violator sufficiently severely that there will be an irrestable incentive to take the extra caution justified by the penalties. All we gotta do is have to guts to try such a program. We've got little to lose; after all, it can't get much worse than it is today. >If we consider laws to restrict the creation and use of databases, we >should always bear in mind that these laws will hit the little guy >harder than the big guy. No it won't. The clearing house concept will suffice for the apathetic herds who just don't care or really do want to be in all databases. >If a community activist makes a list of >people living in one corner of town and sends them mail opposing a >proposed zoning change, should he be prosecuted for Illegal Possession >of a Database? Damn right. Implicit in this question is the assumption that because someone calls himself an activist, he deserves special privilege under the law. I reject that assumption. I'd probably call that same person a troublemaker, an obstructionist or a loudmouth. Of course under my program, the activist COULD set up shop in a sympathetic mall and solicit names. Anyone who signed under those conditions would give explict permission for that one use. >What if a service station keeps records of its >customers and uses a computer to determine who's due for an oil change? Same. If he wants to keep the records, he gets the permission of each customer when he sets the database up. That would keep him from later getting greedy and selling the list to a boileroom. >It would be even worse if a law specifically forbid the use of a >computer to process the information. Computers can greatly increase >the efficacy of citizen activists and "radical" publications, as well >as the more "legitimate" businesses. I'm not advocating calling out computers or any other form of data manipulation in the law. But the concept, now that you mention it, is intriguing. Give the private citizen a method of shutting up the loudmouth who pushes the outer limit of acceptable behavior. You might have something there. Before you knee-jerk too violently, remember that your activist is my troublemaker and vice versa. -- John De Armond, WD4OQC | "Purveyors of Performance Products Rapid Deployment System, Inc. | to the Trade " (tm) Marietta, Ga | {emory,uunet}!rsiatl!jgd | "Vote early, Vote often"