California to sell wage data to companies

jpatters writes "CNN is reporting that the state of California will be selling confidential wage data to private companies. They hope to raise $15 million over the next decade. Read the full story "Yeargh-I love governments blurring the line between my life and companies.

Comments

The money should go to the individuals involved

[Bruce Perens]

Your salary data is your property, not the states. The fees for that data should go to you, not the state.

The best way to control this sort of thing is to take away the money. How about a class-action suit against companies that sell your data to recover profits that should be rightfully yours.

Bruce

Re:The money should go to the individuals involved

[Bruce Perens]

Well, your employer might have something to say about who they want looking at salary data.

For example, back when I worked at Pixar, someone who had physical access to a Mac in Payroll mailed everybody's salaries to everybody else. That's the basis of the IBM "hacker" commercial. It got a lot of people at Pixar very rightfully annoyed.

It's ,i>your personal data, though. The usual argument against it is the "slippery slope" one, first salary data, then medical data, then even more personal stuff. Then you're Winston Smith.

Bruce

Privately held corporations?

[jpatters]

This needs to be halted.

I bet if CA threatened to sell the profit/loss figures for privately held corporations (which of course they know) then that would be stopped Real Quick.

Wage Data in Texas

[DonkPunch]

Unlike California, Texas does not have a state income tax (a big reason why I live here). How does the Texas state government get wage information on its citizens? Is federal income tax info forwarded by the federal government to the Texas state government?

The article said that Texas sells _similar_ data, which makes me think that the data may be more along the lines of driver's license, vehicle registration, or birth certificate info. I don't think it's terribly hard to obtain someone's home address based on their license plate number, for example.

Either way, the selling of personal information by a local government is incredibly intrusive. It alarms me that elected officials have the cajones to even suggest such an idea, let alone implement it.

Why can't governments do something good for once?

[meersan]

Why can't a government be useful for something for a change? If I wanted my personal data sold to the highest bidder, I'd sell it myself. I don't personally mind the lack of privacy so much as the fact that someone else is getting rich on my data -- without my permission. Instead of outlawing vaguely-defined net obscenities and swear words, how about actually protecting citizens? (And I hate spam as much as the next person. I feel it should be covered under the telecom act which banned fax spam. Especially email that attempts to sell items or pornography -- how would you feel if your kid got email like that? At least if it's on the web they have to actively seek it out. Spam is target-blind and you should have to opt-in to receive it.)

I'd like to see some legislation outlawing the sale or share of personal data by corporations without consent or compensation.

This is exploitation, pure and simple. You can't even opt out of giving your information to a state or federal government.

I have a question...

[webslacker]

Are names attached to salary data, or is it just going to be anonymous data about how much workers at certain companys earn, etc? If my name's not attached, I couldn't care less. I'd die of embarassment if someone found out how much I was making.

we need access to our own data

[cweber]

Now what's really missing is free access to data collected by the state about us. Europeans have that, and it is scary how much BS needs to be corrected sometimes when an individual takes the time and effort to check.
Then again, I prefer for them to sell BS to companies rather than the truth about me ;-)

Government is not a for-profit organization.

[Poe]

The arguments that one should be paid for the information are basically invalid. The state of California has to use these revenues for it's own programs, meaning that the citizens of California will theoretically get more value from their state government.

On the other hand, this information wasn't volunteered, so it should be freely available to all or protected from the prying eyes of all. Anything else would be economic favoritism.

How to contact your CA assemblyperson

[tedd]

http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/acsf rameset9.htm

talk to 'em, my fellow californians...
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.:.
: tedd

Re:How to contact your CA assemblyperson

[copito]

With nation-wide ISP's, they won't know that some people don't live in
California.
Which is why letters or phone calls would be far more persuasive. A letter with a return address in the legislators district is probably worth a few hundred emails.
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Disturbing thoughts...

[angelo]

This may be a disturbing thought to ya'll but the government has become a corporation like any other. They just want to make money any way possible, including marketing deals. This is not surprising, since this past century in the US has turned our country from a constitution-based society to a quasi-socialist corporation. "Civil" rights are held against constitutional rights, and the freedom to follow the bill of rights is being shut off day by day. 1984 is just 15 years late.

I can't wait for the political firestorm

[InterGuru]

Remember the uproar when states tried to sell driver's license photos. This one will be even worst. The people who proposed it either have been living on the other side of the moon or have IQ's lower than the room temperature.