Ok, since you're the person I was originally responding to...
Are you an elected official?
Because you said that you don't care who knows your health information. I didn't understand you to be speaking of elected officials, but about the confidentiality of the everyday person in health matters.
Me, I don't care who my elected officials have slept with, especially not years past. Why do you? Is there some practical reason, that tells you that a preference for brunettes makes them more likely to succeed at peace in the Middle East, or is it just your sordid curiosity?
One does not need to disclose any infirmity or illness to an employer which does not affect their job duties. So yes, you can hide health information from your employer. For some things, it's illegal for them to ask (like pregnancy), so the legality of lying in response is moot.
My point about avoiding treatment for mental illness because of the fear of disclosure is that, if you're not *diagnosed*, you can continue to hide the condition. If everyone's health history is public, there is no way to keep your chronic depression or occasional thoughts of suicide or inappropriate feelings toward your cousin confidential, and seek treatment for these things. This is bad, because then people will just forgo treatment, even more often than they already do.
The final point is that, while you, personally, may not feel any need to have privacy for your health information, there are many, many people who have entirely legitimate reasons for not wanting to be judged by the public at large for their health record. Therefore, privacy should be the norm, so that they're also not judged for keeping their record private.
Elected officials don't have a whole lot of privacy about their health matters anyway. Candidates for major offices get physicals and screenings that are public record. The records of their family members are often scrutinized as well. That's a different issue than "Why should I care who knows about my injuries and ailments?" and wasn't what I was trying to address at all.
Usenet, telnet, bash, text-based email, html without plugins, privoxy, linux. It's all still there.
I miss Clarinet.
And it's funny how we've come full-circle: first, we had shell accounts. Back then, my boyfriend (now my ex-husband) was sooooo impressed when I had an account on a school network where EVERY computer had ITS OWN IP address and was DIRECTLY ON THE INTERNET.
Then we all got PPP/SLIP, and everyone was directly on the internet.
Now, though, I run Linux at home, or at work I SSH to my web host or whatever, so that I can have that handy-dandy shell account available when I want it.
Slashdot's subscription service adds very little value to the free service, as far as I can tell. I already get a checkbox asking if I want to hide the adds, and if that weren't here, there is still adblock. How much can Slashdot possibly make on subscriptions, and how many people currently viewing for free would pay to view this content? Especially if all sites started charging for viewing because they no longer had ad revenue?
Some people pay for subscriptions just to support a site they like and want to stick around. It's an alternative model to ad-supported content, and if internet ads are "defeated" as a valid revenue stream, it'll be the dominant model.
A third alternative is how many cable channels support themselves... by charging the providers, who pass on the fees to the customer. So it could also be "Act now, and get Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Slashdot for only $4.99 a month!" and you ask, "But, can't I just get Slashdot?" and they say, "Sure! For just $4.98 a month!" and so you spend the extra penny so you can find out what your FB-addict friends are doing these days.
I don't consider health matters private. Why should I care who knows about my injuries and ailments?
You may not care, personally. Here are reasons why many people do care:
1) Certain health issues may be highly correlated with certain traits or lifestyle decisions which are highly sensitive topics. If you picked up gonorrhea 15 years ago because "There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college", do you want your current prospective employer deciding whether to hire you based on whether they expect you to sleep around with the staff?
2) Some people specifically don't want the sympathy or pity that full disclosure of their infirmities would engender.
3) Health insurers might deny you for coverage or claims if they knew you had X abnormality. Employers might turn you down because you're more expensive to insure (and their insurer gives them a break if they keep people with certain issues off the payroll).
4) Sometimes "your" health history isn't just yours. Should my birth histories be made public, so that my children's earliest moments are a matter of public record? What if they're applying to some college, and someone comes out with a study that correlates c-section delivery with underacheiving... should "my" health history compromise their chances of admittance?
5) Fear of disclosure of treatment already prevents many people from seeking help when they know they have mental health issues, due to stigma. If all health-related information was public knowledge, this would be far worse.
6) Even if an individual doesn't have any issues they think should be private, if privacy is not the norm, then anyone who strives to keep things private will have a spotlight shone on them. What are they hiding? If everyone sent all their mail on postcards, then everyone would be suspicious of the guy whose mail came in envelopes, but with envelopes as the norm, you can send confidential or private information through the mail without piquing the public's interest.
Still, the said officials can retain the full privacy of everything that isn't directly work related (IE. What they do on their time off work, what they do during their lunch breaks, whose photo they have in their wallet and what bodyparts have they pierced...)
but but but!... If public servants' privacy off-hours is strictly defended (and I'm not saying it shouldn't be), how does the public keep politicians from using their 'private' time to cut back-room deals on public legislation? Just trust their say-so on the matter?
If a public official makes their "private time" part of their public office, then that time is part of them doing their job. Most office holders, once you get beyond Podunk City Deputy Councilmember, are not working 9-5:30 punch in/punch out. Their "public" actions and "private" actions are not delineated by what time they occur, but by where and with whom they occur.
I think we also need to remember that our officials are people, too, and allow them to hold and even express opinions that are NOT a matter of policy. Someone could personally believe very deeply that abortion is a bad idea, and still acknowledge that by the law of the land and the will of the people, it is legal and something that women are entitled to choose. If we allow people to have a personal and professional sphere of life, we'll have *less* influence of the personal sphere on the professional.
And to help simplify things, rather than this hodge-podge of laws. Just make one. Without expressed permission of the individual, none of their personally identifiable information can be transmitted/transferred between companies.
The information about an individual should be the property of the individual, not the company (or govt. agency) that holds and collects it.
That's all well and good, but in general, the greatest harm does not come from personally identifiable information being transferred in the course of normal business. The harm comes from the information being collected and stored, and then compromised by a third party (or possibly someone internal to the company) who uses the information in a way that was not anticipated by the person the info belongs to, and that might damage them (their credit rating, their legal standing, the safety of their family, their eligibility for insurance, etc.)
So I think we need to back up a step on the privacy discussion, and make it perfectly clear that, regardless of whether provable harm comes to an individual as a result of private information being shared, an entity that collects and stores personally identifiable information may be financially liable for any breach of that information, regardless of whether they intended to share it or took measures to prevent it. The fines would be higher for certain types of info, like SSN and birthdate (things that are hard or impossible to change and used to identify you), and lower for less "useful" information (like shopping habits)... but would be chargeable for each and every occasion of your information ending up in someone else's hands.
Then you also need to require companies to disclose how they got your information. Get a random call from Bob's Remodeling? Before you say "We're on the Federal Do Not Call list" and hang up, you say "Where did you obtain this name and number?" and they have to tell you. If you did not opt-in to having your information shared for that purpose (and it would need to say something pretty specific, like "telephone marketing" for example), then the source is again liable.
This would lead to companies like Google, who collect info that's mostly useful in the aggregate, to carefully de-identify databases wherever possible, because the reciprocal is that non-personally-identifiable information will NOT incur fines if disclosed. It would also possibly stop your doctor's office, child's school, and everyone else in creation asking for your SSN, because they know that if someone happens to read your SSN off your form and use it for ID theft, they might have to pay $BIGNUM.
Computers and the cheapness of disk space make everyone want to save every bit of data they can, and ultimately this is the biggest threat to privacy. That's the behavior we need to change.
Furthermore, who's to say that all those credit card holders wouldn't have bought these songs anyway? Perhaps they should all get charged an extra convenience fee.
I'm sure the RIAA's position would be that the legitimate card holders would have paid good money to buy the songs if these meddling criminals hadn't gotten in the way of the transaction... and if the band had been represented by a major label.
Of course, what I wonder is, do the original card holders now own a license to listen to the music?
Computer makers would then have the option to add the browser back in, ship another browser or ship multiple browsers, according to a confidential memo that was sent to PC makers and seen by CNET News."
But they wouldn't have the option of shipping the computer without any web browser installed at all?;-)
If someone wants a new browser they should get it themselves. Can someone explain to me why bundling IE with windows is considered to be a trust? MS doesn't charge any money for it, and it was better than Netscape when it came out, why is it all of the sudden a trust and not a trust 15 years ago?
It was antitrust 15 years ago. The DOJ found for Netscape. Then we elected Bush, and the enforcement of the ruling went out the window.
(BTW, it's antitrust because MS leveraged their OS monopoly to gain market share for their browser, after Netscape turned down their purchase offer.)
Unless the tech was installing a DVD Burner, he had no business looking at the customers file system as that's a violation of the customers right to privacy.
There's a "right to privacy" associated with hiring technicians to repair personal items?
What are the penalties for violation?
If Circuit City had a policy prohibiting poking around customers' files, then the technician in question could very well have been written up or fired. But I don't think there's any *legal* recourse for this sort of activity. Yeah, it might not be good business... but that's not an issue of rights.
For one, many routine oil changes also require you to change your oil or air filter (depending on what your car manual details for that mileage). A good mechanic will optionally provide you with the parts they removed for your own disposal, so you can verify the replacement was made. Whenever I've opted to keep the parts, they've been placed in my trunk for me.
A helpful mechanic might notice your rear brakelight is out, and fix it, too. I mean, they can throw in the $4 bulb and the few minutes it takes to change it if they value your business. The access for the brakelights on many cars is through the trunk.
They might look in your glovebox for your manual to record the oil change, and not finding it there, look for it in the trunk.
They might accidentally pull the trunk latch when they mean to pop the hood. They then have to close the trunk.
The trunk is a perfectly ordinary part of a car to access in the course of a variety of activities. It's unreasonable to expect privacy of your trunk when placing your car with someone for repair. Similarly, it's unreasonable to expect privacy of your files when turning your computer over to someone for repair.
Even if the evidence of wrongdoing isn't in plain sight (like, you've got a latched opaque filebox in your trunk, which contains documents detailing how to hack the county's electronic voting system to throw elections), it's hard to argue that the evidence can't be used against you because the mechanic was nosy, unless the mechanic has a documented grudge against you or was encouraged or retained by the cops to snoop on people. Sure, sue the mechanic's place for being nosy, you might win. You might even get the mechanic charged with a crime for poking around your luggage. But ultimately, the mechanic's wrong is not a grave enough injustice to make the evidence inadmissible.
There are also groups of people, called mandated reporters, who are required to report certain suspicious activity related to children, whether or not they actually witnessed it directly. Teachers and doctors are mandated reporters. I was one when I was a licensed foster parent. You get training to spot abuse, but you get in trouble for not reporting signs that someone untrained isn't liable for.
You don't always get trained. ALL "childcare workers" are mandated reporters; I was one when I was a camp counselor. Our training consisted of being told we were legally required to report any signs of abuse, and that was it.
I certainly WOULD have liked to have salacious pics of my girlfriends back in the day, but back then you had to use film cameras and let someone else develop them, which is why such pics were NEVER taken.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, since you're the person I was originally responding to...
Are you an elected official?
Because you said that you don't care who knows your health information. I didn't understand you to be speaking of elected officials, but about the confidentiality of the everyday person in health matters.
Me, I don't care who my elected officials have slept with, especially not years past. Why do you? Is there some practical reason, that tells you that a preference for brunettes makes them more likely to succeed at peace in the Middle East, or is it just your sordid curiosity?
One does not need to disclose any infirmity or illness to an employer which does not affect their job duties. So yes, you can hide health information from your employer. For some things, it's illegal for them to ask (like pregnancy), so the legality of lying in response is moot.
My point about avoiding treatment for mental illness because of the fear of disclosure is that, if you're not *diagnosed*, you can continue to hide the condition. If everyone's health history is public, there is no way to keep your chronic depression or occasional thoughts of suicide or inappropriate feelings toward your cousin confidential, and seek treatment for these things. This is bad, because then people will just forgo treatment, even more often than they already do.
The final point is that, while you, personally, may not feel any need to have privacy for your health information, there are many, many people who have entirely legitimate reasons for not wanting to be judged by the public at large for their health record. Therefore, privacy should be the norm, so that they're also not judged for keeping their record private.
Elected officials don't have a whole lot of privacy about their health matters anyway. Candidates for major offices get physicals and screenings that are public record. The records of their family members are often scrutinized as well. That's a different issue than "Why should I care who knows about my injuries and ailments?" and wasn't what I was trying to address at all.
Pity he didn't have a drivers licence though!
You can get those from the internet too.
Our internet is still there.
Usenet, telnet, bash, text-based email, html without plugins, privoxy, linux. It's all still there.
I miss Clarinet.
And it's funny how we've come full-circle: first, we had shell accounts. Back then, my boyfriend (now my ex-husband) was sooooo impressed when I had an account on a school network where EVERY computer had ITS OWN IP address and was DIRECTLY ON THE INTERNET.
Then we all got PPP/SLIP, and everyone was directly on the internet.
Now, though, I run Linux at home, or at work I SSH to my web host or whatever, so that I can have that handy-dandy shell account available when I want it.
Slashdot's subscription service adds very little value to the free service, as far as I can tell. I already get a checkbox asking if I want to hide the adds, and if that weren't here, there is still adblock. How much can Slashdot possibly make on subscriptions, and how many people currently viewing for free would pay to view this content? Especially if all sites started charging for viewing because they no longer had ad revenue?
Some people pay for subscriptions just to support a site they like and want to stick around. It's an alternative model to ad-supported content, and if internet ads are "defeated" as a valid revenue stream, it'll be the dominant model.
A third alternative is how many cable channels support themselves... by charging the providers, who pass on the fees to the customer. So it could also be "Act now, and get Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Slashdot for only $4.99 a month!" and you ask, "But, can't I just get Slashdot?" and they say, "Sure! For just $4.98 a month!" and so you spend the extra penny so you can find out what your FB-addict friends are doing these days.
...who read the headline as "Jet Stream Kittens to Power New York City"?
I don't consider health matters private. Why should I care who knows about my injuries and ailments?
You may not care, personally. Here are reasons why many people do care:
1) Certain health issues may be highly correlated with certain traits or lifestyle decisions which are highly sensitive topics. If you picked up gonorrhea 15 years ago because "There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college", do you want your current prospective employer deciding whether to hire you based on whether they expect you to sleep around with the staff?
2) Some people specifically don't want the sympathy or pity that full disclosure of their infirmities would engender.
3) Health insurers might deny you for coverage or claims if they knew you had X abnormality. Employers might turn you down because you're more expensive to insure (and their insurer gives them a break if they keep people with certain issues off the payroll).
4) Sometimes "your" health history isn't just yours. Should my birth histories be made public, so that my children's earliest moments are a matter of public record? What if they're applying to some college, and someone comes out with a study that correlates c-section delivery with underacheiving... should "my" health history compromise their chances of admittance?
5) Fear of disclosure of treatment already prevents many people from seeking help when they know they have mental health issues, due to stigma. If all health-related information was public knowledge, this would be far worse.
6) Even if an individual doesn't have any issues they think should be private, if privacy is not the norm, then anyone who strives to keep things private will have a spotlight shone on them. What are they hiding? If everyone sent all their mail on postcards, then everyone would be suspicious of the guy whose mail came in envelopes, but with envelopes as the norm, you can send confidential or private information through the mail without piquing the public's interest.
but but but!... If public servants' privacy off-hours is strictly defended (and I'm not saying it shouldn't be), how does the public keep politicians from using their 'private' time to cut back-room deals on public legislation? Just trust their say-so on the matter?
If a public official makes their "private time" part of their public office, then that time is part of them doing their job. Most office holders, once you get beyond Podunk City Deputy Councilmember, are not working 9-5:30 punch in/punch out. Their "public" actions and "private" actions are not delineated by what time they occur, but by where and with whom they occur.
I think we also need to remember that our officials are people, too, and allow them to hold and even express opinions that are NOT a matter of policy. Someone could personally believe very deeply that abortion is a bad idea, and still acknowledge that by the law of the land and the will of the people, it is legal and something that women are entitled to choose. If we allow people to have a personal and professional sphere of life, we'll have *less* influence of the personal sphere on the professional.
Correct!
And to help simplify things, rather than this hodge-podge of laws. Just make one. Without expressed permission of the individual, none of their personally identifiable information can be transmitted/transferred between companies.
The information about an individual should be the property of the individual, not the company (or govt. agency) that holds and collects it.
That's all well and good, but in general, the greatest harm does not come from personally identifiable information being transferred in the course of normal business. The harm comes from the information being collected and stored, and then compromised by a third party (or possibly someone internal to the company) who uses the information in a way that was not anticipated by the person the info belongs to, and that might damage them (their credit rating, their legal standing, the safety of their family, their eligibility for insurance, etc.)
So I think we need to back up a step on the privacy discussion, and make it perfectly clear that, regardless of whether provable harm comes to an individual as a result of private information being shared, an entity that collects and stores personally identifiable information may be financially liable for any breach of that information, regardless of whether they intended to share it or took measures to prevent it. The fines would be higher for certain types of info, like SSN and birthdate (things that are hard or impossible to change and used to identify you), and lower for less "useful" information (like shopping habits)... but would be chargeable for each and every occasion of your information ending up in someone else's hands.
Then you also need to require companies to disclose how they got your information. Get a random call from Bob's Remodeling? Before you say "We're on the Federal Do Not Call list" and hang up, you say "Where did you obtain this name and number?" and they have to tell you. If you did not opt-in to having your information shared for that purpose (and it would need to say something pretty specific, like "telephone marketing" for example), then the source is again liable.
This would lead to companies like Google, who collect info that's mostly useful in the aggregate, to carefully de-identify databases wherever possible, because the reciprocal is that non-personally-identifiable information will NOT incur fines if disclosed. It would also possibly stop your doctor's office, child's school, and everyone else in creation asking for your SSN, because they know that if someone happens to read your SSN off your form and use it for ID theft, they might have to pay $BIGNUM.
Computers and the cheapness of disk space make everyone want to save every bit of data they can, and ultimately this is the biggest threat to privacy. That's the behavior we need to change.
Furthermore, who's to say that all those credit card holders wouldn't have bought these songs anyway? Perhaps they should all get charged an extra convenience fee.
I'm sure the RIAA's position would be that the legitimate card holders would have paid good money to buy the songs if these meddling criminals hadn't gotten in the way of the transaction... and if the band had been represented by a major label.
Of course, what I wonder is, do the original card holders now own a license to listen to the music?
I buy itunes cards at walmart. They take cash (so does the Apple store)
True, but we're talking about how to use a stolen credit card number to buy them.
Computer makers would then have the option to add the browser back in, ship another browser or ship multiple browsers, according to a confidential memo that was sent to PC makers and seen by CNET News."
But they wouldn't have the option of shipping the computer without any web browser installed at all? ;-)
Because the market share of Mac OS is not large enough to constitute an exploitable monopoly position.
If someone wants a new browser they should get it themselves. Can someone explain to me why bundling IE with windows is considered to be a trust? MS doesn't charge any money for it, and it was better than Netscape when it came out, why is it all of the sudden a trust and not a trust 15 years ago?
It was antitrust 15 years ago. The DOJ found for Netscape. Then we elected Bush, and the enforcement of the ruling went out the window.
(BTW, it's antitrust because MS leveraged their OS monopoly to gain market share for their browser, after Netscape turned down their purchase offer.)
Unless the tech was installing a DVD Burner, he had no business looking at the customers file system as that's a violation of the customers right to privacy.
There's a "right to privacy" associated with hiring technicians to repair personal items?
What are the penalties for violation?
If Circuit City had a policy prohibiting poking around customers' files, then the technician in question could very well have been written up or fired. But I don't think there's any *legal* recourse for this sort of activity. Yeah, it might not be good business... but that's not an issue of rights.
Sure there is.
For one, many routine oil changes also require you to change your oil or air filter (depending on what your car manual details for that mileage). A good mechanic will optionally provide you with the parts they removed for your own disposal, so you can verify the replacement was made. Whenever I've opted to keep the parts, they've been placed in my trunk for me.
A helpful mechanic might notice your rear brakelight is out, and fix it, too. I mean, they can throw in the $4 bulb and the few minutes it takes to change it if they value your business. The access for the brakelights on many cars is through the trunk.
They might look in your glovebox for your manual to record the oil change, and not finding it there, look for it in the trunk.
They might accidentally pull the trunk latch when they mean to pop the hood. They then have to close the trunk.
The trunk is a perfectly ordinary part of a car to access in the course of a variety of activities. It's unreasonable to expect privacy of your trunk when placing your car with someone for repair. Similarly, it's unreasonable to expect privacy of your files when turning your computer over to someone for repair.
Even if the evidence of wrongdoing isn't in plain sight (like, you've got a latched opaque filebox in your trunk, which contains documents detailing how to hack the county's electronic voting system to throw elections), it's hard to argue that the evidence can't be used against you because the mechanic was nosy, unless the mechanic has a documented grudge against you or was encouraged or retained by the cops to snoop on people. Sure, sue the mechanic's place for being nosy, you might win. You might even get the mechanic charged with a crime for poking around your luggage. But ultimately, the mechanic's wrong is not a grave enough injustice to make the evidence inadmissible.
There are also groups of people, called mandated reporters, who are required to report certain suspicious activity related to children, whether or not they actually witnessed it directly. Teachers and doctors are mandated reporters. I was one when I was a licensed foster parent. You get training to spot abuse, but you get in trouble for not reporting signs that someone untrained isn't liable for.
You don't always get trained. ALL "childcare workers" are mandated reporters; I was one when I was a camp counselor. Our training consisted of being told we were legally required to report any signs of abuse, and that was it.
I certainly WOULD have liked to have salacious pics of my girlfriends back in the day, but back then you had to use film cameras and let someone else develop them, which is why such pics were NEVER taken.
Oh, yes, they were. One word... Polaroid.
Mercury and Venus are just trying to start a beowulf cluster of planets.
Just blow up the sun so it stops swinging these planets at us.
The sun *is* blowing up. Very, very, slowly.
I thought he promised her some drugs and some pills...
Is it any wonder the general public doesn't take science seriously nowadays?
It sort of seems like the problem is that science doesn't take the general public seriously nowadays.
Because the collision of two planets is beyond epic.
You mean it's Legendary?
I am not worried about something that may happen in billions of years. I think the chance that I will be around then is even smaller.
I just finished reading Spin by by Robert Charles Wilson. I'm now terrified that this will, in fact, happen within my lifetime.
Here in Brazil, they are training falcons to scare birds away from airport zones.
So the solution to the bird problem is... more birds?
So what's the difference between the crowd making a mistale and the police making a mistake?
Right of appeal.