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EU Privacy Directive — Coming To the US?
An anonymous reader writes "An article over at ComputerWorld implies that the EU Privacy Directive, or something like it, will soon be signed into law here in the USA. The author seems to think this is a good thing, but I'm not so sure. From the article: 'We've finally come to realize that self-regulation by industry hasn't worked. The states have stepped in, creating the same situation of conflicting regulation that led to the creation of the EU privacy directive. The only question now is if the law that comes out of Congress will be a small step strictly focused on breaches, such as S.239, or whether we take the bigger step of forming a permanent committee under the FTC to monitor privacy as outlined by S.1178. Either way, the U.S. is finally moving away from the fractured environment of the past and toward a comprehensive privacy strategy.' Is it time for a national privacy law or 'Privacy Czar', or are we better off letting things be?"
...ever makes it into US law (if ever), it will be so watered down and ineffective that it might as well not even exist. The corporations who now run the USA will not stand for it.
I believe Czar is a Native American word meaning destined for failure.
in the past, as near as maybe 20-30 years ago, privacy was not a huge issue, because it wasn't so easy and cheap to amass data. of course, files on people have always existed, but they were specialized and compartmentalized, and not easy to correlate and analyse. nevertheless, some governments (mostly associated with ex-communist countries) are known to have excelled at collection, storage and retrieval of files on people, even if they only used paper. these files were very successfully used to make people behave in certain ways.
:(
now, when there is the technology to collect, store and correlate all kinds of data about very many people by just about any entity with a minor budget, and there are no clear rules about what is okay and what is not, it is easy for the individual to be a target of abuse by a more powerful group (be that government, a large company, or some foundation), and it is almost impossible for the individual to counter-balance such groups, as data collection seems, in the absense of rules, quite legal, and, depending on the profile, the person may not be in a position to make a strong stand. so, it is pretty obvious that some levelling of the playing field is in order, and that it should be made a law, so that it has teeth.
to me the reasonable minimum would be the ability of a person to see the information an entity has amassed on them, and to be able to remove parts of their profile or (that being un-possible for some reason) the whole profile at any time, at least from a private organization. exceptions from that rule should be considered carefully, and introduced on a demonstrated need basis.
this will probably kill a few tabloid publications, and decrease the availability of movie star pictures on the internet though
The US bill does nothing to prevent a corporation from deliberately disclosing whatever they want to whomever they want - it's focused exclusively on securing those transactions from third parties.
The law is summed up in this paragraph:
I have a thing about my Social Security number - I only give it to those who require it to fulfill legal mandates. That includes my employer, who has decided (without my permission, and despite my express denial) to give it to a health care provider. This proposed law does nothing to prevent that.
I want them to be prevented from "selling or transferring" my confidential information, without my voluntary consent (no consent as a condition of employment, etc.).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
On a daily basis, do you protect your valuables and confidential records because you're afraid of a public official confiscating them or some random private citizen busting in and stealing them? Strangely enough, the primary reason we have government in the first place is to guard against the latter (whether through policing, the courts or recognition of property rights in general). Yet, people are /far/ more careless with their information and property in the hands of other private interests over whom they have virtually no control than they are with their public counterparts over whom they have direct control.
This is puzzling.
I believe Czar is a Native American word meaning destined for failure.
Y'know, based on my knowledge of history, I'd have to guess it means the same thing in Russian.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I know almost nothing about the EU Privacy Directive, but I think the UK's Data Protection Act implements all or part of it, and I have a basic understanding of this. Please note my knowledge is very limited, there may be factual errors in my post, I'm not a lawyer.
The Data Protection Act restricts what an organisation can do with any personal data (such as your address), which it processes.
For example, the organisation:
See http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/RightsAndResponsibili