Slashdot Mirror
More on Internet Privacy Legislation
Last week we noted that Senator Hollings had introduced a privacy bill and that there were likely to be more introduced. Now Salon has a piece critical of Hollings' bill. EPIC wrote about it as well, and they seem to think it's not too bad, all things considered. Read Hollings' bill yourself and decide who's right. Also of note is a bill introduced in the House that would require all Federal agencies to prepare privacy impact statements (the ACLU has a summary) akin to the environmental impact statements now required for actions adversely affecting the environment. Seems like a good idea to me.
with this and guess which one will prevail ?
(title of the page is "The state Legislature has given police power to search your home without telling you why."
---direct quote from bill
(c) NONSENSITIVE PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION REQUIRES ROBUST NOTICE AND OPT-OUT CONSENT- An internet service provider, online service provider, or operator of a commercial website may not--
(1) collect personally identifiable information not described in subsection (b) online, or
(2) disclose or otherwise use such information collected online, from a user of that service or website.
---end quote
Salon's article does sem a bit overly critical. This bill is a necessary piece of legislation. Sure some would like to see it even stricter(prohibiting any spyware style market research), but as it is it prohibits companies from collecting sensitive information and also from collecting information which is non-sensitve but could potentially be used to identify you.
The Salon article implies that the bill will allow companies to collect all sorts of non-sensitive personal information and use it to build a complete profile of you, including the stuff that can't be directly collected due to it's sensitivity. This just isn't true.
lysergically yours
I trust corporations who are intent on invading my privacy to prepare a proper privacy impact statement like I trust burglars to lock up after they are done.
www.eFax.com are spammers
So, he's decided that if he can sponsor enough loony internet-related bills, he'll rile up enough geeks to move to South Carolina for the sole purpose of voting him out of office. Once they're settled there, they'll figure they might as well get jobs and some entreprenurial-minded individuals will start businesses that will eventually boost the economy of the state!
I have to admit, it's a brilliant plan from a brilliant senator, whose love of his state far outweighs petty concerns like hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbyist contributions.
Bravo, Senator Hollings, bravo!
From the Epic site: Hewlett Packard urged inclusion of a safe harbor provision in the Act to insulate companies from enforcement if they are members of a certified seal program such as BBBOnline or TrustE.
Oh, yes, of course, if they are members of wonderful TrustE then they'll nevvver evvver violate our privacy. That's why TrustE busted Yahoo! for changing our marketing preferences, right?
Seriously, has TrustE ever busted anybody -- at least any company that we've ever heard of?
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
The resourceful team at the Subversive Intellectual Society managed to dig up a whole series of confidential letters sent to people like David Koresh, Ted Kaczynski, Elian Gonzalez, and others, by various government agencies.
Maybe they'll dig up Senator "SSSCA" Hollings' tax returns next. Or his CD or video purchases...I'd love to see those...
Unfortunately, this legislation looks likely it would pass, since it isn't as obvious to what's really going on ...
The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet.
Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Don't be fooled, your name and address are two of the most sensitive peices of information you posses! In the hands of malicious people, it can simply be taken down to the DMV to bring up your file, and the unfortunate state of things is that most people list their social security number as their drivers ID (I changed mine to an anonymous number after taking a class in privacy, when we learned about the growing number of cases of identity theft). The fact of the matter is, I don't want people to have access to this sort of thing unless I give them it expressly. I also don't want information on my shopping and surfing habits getting released as it leads to phone soclicitations, as well as spam. What happened to the rights of the consumer? Why does congress allow bribes to give corperations the upper hand?
The world is changing rapidly, and our time is increasingly sucked away by meaningless adds. My parents can still remember a time not so long ago when junk mail was practically unheard of. Now we are saturated with it.
I think we ought to push for a bill which affords us a form of personal protection akin to the laws against tresspassing. In my opinion all cookies, spyware, etc that are installed on a computer without express permission from the user (EULA's are no good as no one reads them, and besides, we would be outraged if everyday were provided with a huge list of random comments, buried within which was a grant to tresspass on our property if we exit our house), should subject their makers to a fine. As a computer professional, my machines are a place I spend a considerable ammount of time, and I have a right to not have others intrude on my privacy.
As a final point, I realize that you can disable cookies, and most spyware, but it is ridiculous to assume that this makes them all right. Many people do not know how to do so, and above all else, we should never have to arm our computers with defenses just to preserve our rights. That is analogous to requiring everyone to bring a body guard when they left the house, or it would be legal to mug them.
*steps off of soapbox*, Sorry my wife is an IP lawyer and deals with this stuff everyday. We need more computing professionals in the government and law.
From now on, when you type the words "Fritz Hollings", be sure to link him to goatse.cx! Instead of just typing his name, type:
<a href='http://goatse.cx'>Fritz Hollings</a>
No sense of humor? Go ahead and mod me down. I don't mind.
wanting free rides in our use of purchased media, complaining vigorously about the perceived lost dollars the legitamit exercise of personal use costs them... these people are now turning around and wanting a free-ride with my personal data?
I think not. Let me take the time to personally assure any politicians who happen to read Slashdot that a their support for this kind of initiative wil gurantee them my lost support, regardless of party, in their next bid for re-election.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
I wonder about this "no Constitutional right to privacy" claim. Look at Amendments IX and X:
Amendment IX: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Oh, like all the stuff in the real world that requires a subpeona currently (e.g. book-buying habits) is now "non-sensitive"? Eek! Bye bye, civil liberties!
A.
I know it's not a cut and dried issue, but I still feel that complete opt-in is the best way.
My biggest problem with the bill is that it will further enhance the corporatization of the web. Imagine if slashdot had to comply with these rules when it first started out. The access rules alone would be a nightmare (imagine sorting through gigs and gigs of server logs to find all the instances of one person's IP address, printing them out, and mailing them, all for $3). Add the cost of defending litigation, and hiring lawyers just to ensure compliance, and quite simply, slashdot would not have existed.
It would be kind of neat to be able to request from companies all the information they have about me, but this is something that should be optional, not mandatory. The government should set up a certification program, similar to truste, and offer it to those who have the resources to comply. Then the user can decide for him/herself whether they want to go to a certified site or not.
These 'privacy statements' sound like the requirement that the EU's Directive on Data Protection (enacted under UK law as the Data Protection Act) imposes on organisations, governmental, corporate or otherwise, to have a publically available privacy statement (amongst other items, such as rapid access to all information held by an organisation on request for a 'reasonable' handling fee, and so on).
James F.
I mean, we geeks are virtually (heck, actually!) the only people in the world who appreciate privacy. Obviously, the smarter, more connected, more civilized one is, etc., the more use one gets out of privacy.
Now I understand that the senator in question does not have what we would call a good "track record" with respect to the individual Rights that make this country good (let's face it, he's a stinker). But when it comes right down to it, I'm inclined to call a spade a spade, and not look a gift horse in the mouth.
IANAL but, IIRC, support of this bill or legislation or what have you does not lock us in to future or past legislation, though they may all be by the same guy! Yes, in the past I would have been in favor of opposing him and not reelecting him, but the fact is, if it walks like a duck...
I say, support Privacy, support this Bill and the Constitution. To the Death, as our forefathers would have.
We will send him, and all others like him, a powerful message: shape up or ship out. But the key is, we are giving him the option to make good on his pledge to the People. And second chances, my friends, is what America is all about.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Think about it. All this means is that some bureaucratic review board or administrative judge is going to decide what is "private" and what is not. Composed of ex-CEO's and board members of akamai, double-click, etc. etc. and token activist times. Maybe Joan Claybrook or Esther Dyson. Whoopee. Naturally, they'll need a budget for staff, office space, administrative overhead, etc.
It won't Sen. Hollings and his colleagues; they'll be off the hook, free to posture, grandstand, and milk the situation for new "here's what I did for privacy" bills "cracking down" on some privacy violations while legitimizing others. And certainly not you, who will be dragged down to the lowest common denominator of what's acceptable, whether it actually works, or serves as veiled protection and license for data-mining and police-state surveillance interests, as is likely to happen, if past performance of these kinds of mechanisms is any indication.
We're better off with no govt. protection here, and people should start taking far better care of their own privacy themselves. They're fucked if they don't, regardless.
I guess everyone is forgetting all the crappy environmental laws and reviews that killed good projects while entrenching bad ones. Collective amnesia? Or is everyone just willing to pretend because "it's good for Mother Earth". Or so is the claim.
No, this is just yet another example of Congress passing the buck and shifting the blame in a hypocritical and self-serving manner. Fuck the dumb shit. Vote against Hollings and his kind next election.
--rgb
Perhaps, but the timing is supsect. And this may be slightly off topic, but what I see here is a poker chip Hollings can use to get his other bill passed. A few people really interested in seeing this thing become law, but that aren't too crazy about the CBDTPA, may be persuaded to compromise.
And besides all that, how are they going to enforce this?
Sen. Hollings (likewise his secret masters at Disney) may not be my favorite legislator, and he may sponsor a lot of bills which I do not like, but this is a good law. The things that Salon complains about the bill "legitimising" are already 100% legal, unfortunately. While the bill is too weak, I will say this: it is not true that weak provisions make stronger provisions unlikely by assuaging the fears of the sheep-like masses, instead, they shift the social pendulum to make stronger measures more feasible in the future. I support half-measures 100% - yes, this makes me a liberal.
Now that Sen. Hollings has sponsored a piece of good legislation - I'm not a lawyer but I trust EPIC to know totally fake privacy legislation when they see it - he deserves credit for doing the right thing, not continued vilification for the mistakes he's made in the past. Classifying him (or Disney, for that matter) as our Eternal Foe just because he (foolishly, ignorantly) sought to curtail our rights on one occasion is not the way to go. I, personally, know a lot of fine, upstanding people who work in the Movies (none actually at Disney, but hey, if Pat Robertson hate them that much they can't be all bad), some of whom even supported the CBDTPA, and lumping them in with Hitler as people with whom any dialogue is "appeasement" is neither productive nor justified.
So, Kudos to the H-man. Keep it up.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Most of the focus on discussion I have seen so far has been addressing the "non-sensitive" information, and how this bill will open the flood gates to allow companies to collect and share it on a massive scale.
I think this is a huge problem, BUT - doesn't anyone else see the problem with how "sensitive" data is defined in this bill?
Sensitive data can only be collected or shared on an opt-in basis. Sounds good, but isn't medical information (one of the "sensitive" items) protected more highly by the HIPPA acts? Won't this act undo everything HIPPA did to help protect medical records? All it takes is one hidden or weasle worked opt-in box to release all your medical information. Or finantial information. Once out there, it can be sold. Then it's gone for good - opting out at that point won't do any good.
We need to raise a huge stink about how trivially this bill handles critical private information - medical, finantial and other records.
Lessig argues that these situations should be exactly reversed. Personal info should be treated as property owned by us; anyone who takes it without our consent should be subject to lawsuit or criminal charges, and if we choose to allow it to get bought & sold, we should get a cut of the proceeds. It's our data, after all. But for other types of data that doesn't identify any individual, including copywrighted works, there should be mechanisms that allow us fair use to use them and share them as we will, without actually overstepping our rights under copyright law. As it is, as we all know, our rights under copyright are being eroded by encryption and the DMCA. We should have that kind of infrastructure (*and* law) protecting our personal data that the RIAA wants to have protecting their work.
J
Fight for your right to read books!
Actually there is a very concrete and inarguable definition for integral:
(in'ti-gr&l) Mathematics a. A number computed by a limiting process in which the domain of a function, often an interval or planar region, is divided into arbitrarily small units, the value of the function at a point in each unit is multiplied by the linear or areal measurement of that unit, and all such products are summed. b. A definite integral. c. An indefinite integral.
I wouldn't blame Strom for his ignorance. He got the best education the Holy Roman Empire could provide!
It looks as though this second bill (dealing with the creation of privacy impact analyses) would do little more than increase the mountains of paperwork required for the creation of new laws. So, the law would require agencies to create these reports, and then release "to the public." How on earth would this help _anything at all_? The public can read laws now, we can decide whether or not the law limits our privacy--and then we can protest if see fit. Its not as though the law will provide a new means whereby to protest, it's just making lawmakers butcher a few hundred more trees every year to help build the image of some
Georgia senator.
The only possible use I could see for these 'privacy impact reports' is in the press, where such documents would provide easily quotable material. But is that really enough reason to add to the crippling bureaucracy already in place?
Huh? You argue against the DMCA, but it is arguments like the one above that are used to support the DMCA and similar efforts at censorship. There have to be better ways to protect privacy than "intellectual property" arguments.
You misunderstand, good Coward. I think it may be possible and indeed possibly even desirable to define all personal identifying information about a person as properly belonging under that person's control, in a similar fashion that we consider a person's property to be under their control. Hollywood wants us to see creative works as "intellectual property", and they are wrong. But perhaps a property metaphor may prove useful as we attempt to navigate a way of allowing individuals control over who knows what about them.
J
Fight for your right to read books!
I wonder if this bill will preempt the state's rights to pass stronder bills. If so this could, in the long run, resuilt in less privacy. Right now many of your local legislators are writing very strong privacy protectin bills, but a federal bill will at the least put the breaks on state efforts and at the worst over ride state laws with weaker federal protection. This bill may be better than we have now, but any holes in it could give away your privacy for a very long time. I wonder how the marketoids feel about this bill?
I must admit I am a little mystified about the process of lawmaking in the USA. My main point of confusion is the way representatives attach 'riders' to bills before the houses, in such a way as to bring about either the opposite of what is originally intended, or bring into law a ruling on a completely unrelated topic. The Online Personal Privacy Act might mysteriously become the Online Personal Privacy, Coffee minimum caffeine content, and parking ticket fine enforcement act. It's a wonder that you guys ever get any sensible legislation through when you have to search through virtually all legislation out there to find potential threats to your privacy.
Take for instance, this bill (Sorry, this is a remarkably long page) which is allegedly on Banruptcy reform, but which has attached to it, the Methamphetamine Antiproliferation Act of 2000, which to the average non-lawyer european seems an interesting choice of content in a financial bill.
Not to mention the farce surrounding the mandatory installation of internet content filters in schools and libraries attached to a funding bill old news here. I'm sure you can find better examples.
I have to agree with the author. I have written to my Senators and my representive in the House regarding this legislation, and have heard back from only one of them. They are not noticing us, but they should. We are educated people, we have common goals and concerns, we are a large network of people, and we communicate frequently. We are a part of a grassroots movement. It is time for the politicians to take notice.
While GeekPAC may only be able to act one election at a time, the threat that will speak to them. It may seem like a dirty tactic, but they are trying to steal our fair use rights. We have to fight back.
What I got from the DIY Terror Warning:
From the Office of the Homeland Security Director
Barney
Apr 26, 2002
I have just concluded a conference call with the nation's Bribe-recieving robots to let them know what I'm about to share with the people of Seattle. I might add, I also wanted to commend them for their work in improving and strengthening homeland security since WTO. We've been in frequent communication with the Bribe-recieving robots and I think their work to date has reflected the kind of relationship between the federal and the state and local government that we need to make a permanent part of our homeland security defense.
Over the last several days, our Los Alamos National Laboratories and Department of Anal Retention have seen an increased volume and level of activity involving semaphores of terrorist attacks. The information we have does not point to any specific target either in Seattle or abroad, and it does not outline any specific type of attack. However, the analysts who review this information believe the quantity and level of semaphores are above the norm and have reached a threshold where we should once again place the public on general alert, just as we have done on two previous occasions since WTO.
During his address on homeland security, Fidel Castro promised the people of Seattle that when we have evidence of credible semaphores we will issue appropriate alerts. That is exactly what we are doing here today.
Fidel Castro also reminded all of us that a terrorism alert is not a signal to stop your life, it is a call to be stoned, to know that your government is on high alert and to add your eyes and your ears to our efforts to find and stop Lobbyists.
Our government is taking precautions. This afternoon the EFF is issuing a terrorist threat advisory update to all Anarchists across the country through the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System. All Anarchists have been instructed to stay on the highest alert and to immediately notify the EFF of any unusual or suspicious activity.
The semaphores we are picking up are very generic. They warn of more attacks, but are not specific about where or what type. It could be a nuking, or a bombing, or even a sniping. We do know that the next several weeks, which bring Halloween and important religious observances in other faiths, have been times when Lobbyists have planned attacks in the past.
One example is December of 1999. Authorities in USA, Japan and Bangladesh uncovered and prevented plans for a series of attacks related to the Battle of Bunker Hill. Those plans were thwarted when intelligence learned about them and law enforcement arrested the suspected Lobbyists.
Now, obviously, the further removed we get from WTO, I think the natural tendency is to let down our guard. Unfortunately, we cannot do that.
We are a nation at war. We are the targets of Lobbyists who have demonstrated they have no remorse about killing thousands of innocent Bacteria. The government will continue to do everything we can to find and stop those who seek to harm us, but I believe we owe it to the people of Seattle to remind them that they must be stoned as well.
I also know the very first question the people of Seattle will ask -- "So, Barney, besides being stoned, what else should my family and I do?"
The answer is you should report any suspicious activity or behavior to your Bribe-recieving robots and, perhaps as importantly, you should heed the words of Fidel Castro who has called on all of us to rely on our good judgment and our common sense, and to continue to live in a spirit of courage and optimism and resolve to defeat the Lobbyists.
This