Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!rsiatl!jgd From: jgd@Dixie.Com (John G. DeArmond) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Database Regulation (was Re: Post Office plans.) Message-ID: <5308@rsiatl.Dixie.Com> Date: 18 Dec 90 22:59:25 GMT References: Organization: Rapid Deployment Systems (making go-fast things and things that-go fast) Lines: 45 abrams@cs.columbia.edu (Steven Abrams) writes: >Is this sufficient reason for making databases illegal? This is >almost along the lines of the "guns don't kill people" type of >argument, with the major exception that there is nothing implicitly >dangerous about data. Yes it is. The gun analogy is not quite right. In general, things that can easily cause harm to people through inadvertant use and/or things that have the potential for mass destruction are most heavily regulated. Plus the degree of regulation (should) depend on the ease of use of the potential harmful force. To look at the destructive devices issue in a different light, consider that blunt instruments are not nearly so regulated as, say, explosives. Though both can effectivly kill, the wad of Centex does so much more efficiently and with much less effort. IN other words, the window of opportunity is much easier. (Plus the use of guns is explicitly protected by the constitution, a fact not true about databases.) Similiarly, most people don't get terribly upset that personal information is available in phone books and at the county court house in the form of record books. Procedures used to harm you via your personal data such as pattern matching and searching and modeling are difficult to impossible until that data is placed in a database. Most people don't even get upset knowing that personal data is available in credit databases because they (sometimes wrongly) assume that the filtering process dictated by law makes it difficult to abuse. Once that same data is in a database manipulatable at will by the abuser, the issue changes remarkably. Since the same data becomes trivially easy to abuse, it stands to reason that additional regulations and prohibited uses should be identified and codified. Like the old saying goes, " an NRA member is often a liberal who has been mugged", those of us who most vigorously fight for personal privacy are often those who have been abused or have seen the abuse done to others. John -- John De Armond, WD4OQC | "Purveyors of speed to the Trade" (tm) Rapid Deployment System, Inc. | Home of the Nidgets (tm) Marietta, Ga | {emory,uunet}!rsiatl!jgd | "Vote early, Vote often"