Interesting Privacy Decision in New Hampshire

TCPALaw writes "A huge decision in privacy law was handed down today by the NH Supreme Court in the Amy Boyer case. Amy was stalked and killed by a man who got her personal information, including SSN, from an on-line information broker. Privacy groups such as EPIC have argued that access to sensitive personal information should carry with it liability for misuse, and can constitute a tort. The NH Supreme Court agreed. Now perhaps you can sue the spyware companies."

Comments

Re:Yellow Pages

[cdrudge]

It however does not cost you anything to put your phone number under a different name. I could put my name under John Smith. Any phone calls that I receive for John Smith can easily be ignored then and it hasn't cost me a cent.

Re:This may not a good thing.

[Sylver Dragon]

If I inadvertantly gave the stalker directions to this person's house, am I liable?

Actully they addressed this in the ruling. The judges found that things such as Work and Home address are not considered private. As such, there is no liabity for giving out or selling this information.
What they did find to be a problem was calling a person, and using a false pretext (a lie) to get or confirm thier work address. Also, they found that obtaining a persons SSN from a credit report header, then selling it was a violation of privacy, and is therefore cause to bring a civil suit against the information broker.
If you haven't yet, I suggest reading the decision, its a bit heavy, but is very well thought out.