Connecticut Governor Seeks to Protect Personal Data Online

Technical Writing Geek alerts us to a report that Connecticut governor Jodi Rell has begun to develop legislation to create an "opt-out" registry to prevent the distribution of personal information on the internet. The registry would be analogous to the "Do Not Call" list. This comes after Rell received many complaints about the availability of personal data from directory assistance sites such as WhitePages and 411.com. While Rell understands that the "sites are breaking no law by gathering and disseminating this information," the legislation will add to the work she has done to re-evaluate the disposition of private data. Where do we draw the line between free speech and privacy in the information age? From the Journal Inquirer: "'Privacy concerns are constantly evolving,' Rell said. 'We must not only keep up with them but do our best to stay ahead of the curve.' Rell said she will ask state agencies to review private information about residents that the state collects, manages, and distributes."

Comments

Publish personal details of all company board

[freedom_india]

Since "now law is broken" by companies for publishing out private information, we can plead the same by publishing the company's members information online.
Every single stockholder, boardmember, CEO, lawyer, employee contact information (including public and private numbers and addresses) should be published online 411.com by us.
Once the mighty CEOs and CFOs see their private and unlisted numbers plus email IDs online, am sure the congress and senate would go overnight to enact a law preventing that from happening.

Re:Publish personal details of all company board

[TaoPhoenix]

Call it "intended to be private".

Just because you can social engineer it out of people doesn't mean it was intended to be known.

Re:Publish personal details of all company board

[MightyYar]

It is not hard to find any of the information that you are asking about. Any public corporation will have SEC data about all of its officers.

Take 411.com. Scroll to the bottom and see that it is run by Whitepages.com, Inc. They have an "about us" page with a leadership section. On that page are all the names you need to get started. Let's start with the top: Alex Algard, Founder and CEO. Searching for him on 411.com yields:

Algard, Alexander & Susie K
1005 5th Ave W
Seattle, WA 98119-3613

3 blocks from their main offices... so, yeah, that's him. Hard, huh?

CEOs not only have less privacy than us already, they have more people looking for them.

where is the line

[Grampaw Willie]

the article asks

where do we draw the line between privacy and free speech?

generally, if you own the press you can print what you want,~~

with a few caveats, however, and as these are well established there is no need for discussion

1. you should not publish slander

2. you should not infringe other folk's copyrights

3. you should not involve in a conspiracy to commit crime

Is my personal information copyright protected? I see no reason why it shouldn't be and in a day and age where we have more hackers than Hollywood had stage robbers there are good reasons why we should protect everyone's personal data by law.

Gosh, we'd be happy if...

[jpellino]

...she'd stop the laptops with state taxpayer financial data from being plucked from employee cars. (They claim they need all the data resident on every laptop whose operator is working on a given datatset.) Here in CT that's the bigger issue for her and the lege, To this more recent one, I can recall people being horrified years ago that we could find their phone listing in whitepages, their address on mapquest and an aerial photo on terraserver. Of course all of this was public information, now it's just easier for the "datarazzi" to get it in bulk. We've been on the DNC list and reg'd with DMA's pref service for years, and they still get thru. National opt-in with some teeth in it would be nice.