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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: 'sensitive' information
Message-ID: <1340@hplabsc.HP.COM>
Date: Tue, 24-Feb-87 02:21:03 EST
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.1340
Posted: Tue Feb 24 02:21:03 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 26-Feb-87 23:50:12 EST
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

The current issue of InformationWEEK (Feb. 16, 1987, pg. 17) has a short 
article on the effects of the recent definition of "sensitive, but not 
unclassified information" issued by John Poindexter, former NSC adviser to 
Reagan.

He said that any information which the "disclosure, loss, misuse, or 
destruction of could adversely affect national security" would be subject to 
careful monitoring.

The article then mentions some of the types of information that might fall in 
this category...then there is a very eye-openning paragraph:

   "Under these guidelines, the US Air Force, the CIA, and the National 
   Security Council have asked the keepers of some fo the country's largest 
   PUBLIC [my emphasis] databases, including Mead Corp.'s Nexus, to supply 
   names of subscribers and install software that will allow the company to 
   more accurately track who asks for what information and when."

Under the broad definition of vital information, an agency of the government 
may decide that any other private information is valuable, and it can monitor 
or hinder, that flow of information.  

I was just imagining the next step...tie the government systems into the city 
and university libraries, then start checking into what we buy at book stores, 
followed eventually by monitoring what we read in the papers.  I feel like some
of my freedom is eroding again.  Thoughts?

Well, now I will have someone watching what I read and what I have in my
urine.  Isn't it nice to have all this attention?

--Bi//