On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> Simson is a smart fellow, and a friend. But he does believe in aggressive
> federal regulation of private sector data collection practices.
Indeed. That is why I mentioned him in response to your note that data
collection is an area which seems to currently lack a strong
"cypherpunk"-ish response to his point of view.
I'm also interested in your comment that contract law may be sufficient to
combat this problem. Garfinkle raises and then dismisses the idea of
considering personal information as "property", and then developing the
notion of rights and contract which we have for other property for
personal information. Who has treated this from the other side, the
libertarian/anarchist/whatever you want to call it viewpoint? is there
a good introduction to "contract law and personal data" lying around
someplace?
> I fear (and
> I should write this if I ever get around to reviewing his book) that he
> focuses too much on that area, and not enough on governmental intrusions
> into privacy.
I think I agree with you. I just turned in my (short) census form today.
There was an article in the school paper about how privacy concerns over
the census are "obviously baseless" because "there are many disclaimers on
the form." The attitude is not confined to the paper; sometimes I end up
arguing with some of my friends who honestly seem to believe that the
exclusionary rule is "enough" to prevent abuse of wiretap power...
Even so, simply stating that private practices are not as much of a
problem as State action does not make the private practice go away. There
do exist some means of combatting private data collections, such as
refusing to use credit cards, check clearing services, etc. At the same
time, these seem to result in consequences which I am not sure I'm willing
to put up with. Is the only response to this to tell me to just "deal with
it" ?
Thanks,
-David
