IP: two on A big story, I think: "Single-Number Plan Raises Privacy Fears"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> cc: lauren () pfir org, neumann () pfir org
>
> Dave,
>
> This is but another one of various "schemes" that claim all sorts of
> marvelous "service integrations" but actually are likely to make an already
> bad situation even worse.  There are already firms out there churning up the
> databases trying to link Internet users' e-mail addresses to "personally
> identifiable information" from other sources (retail sales, phone listings,
> voter registration data, etc.)  so as to have tidy personal dossiers that
> include name, physical address, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and all
> sorts of other goodies.  Anything that makes the jobs of these information
> vampires any easier should be roundly discouraged, particularly when you
> just *know* they won't show up as fully "opt-in" and will end up being
> promoted to people who won't have the backgrounds to fully understand the
> ramifications of participating.
>
> Note that the U.S. Postal Service has been doing their own work along these
> lines, with plans to assign every physical address in the country its own
> e-mail address.  The negative ramifications of that I'll leave as an
> exercise for the reader for now.
>
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein
> lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () privacyforum org
> Co-Founder, PFIR: People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
> Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
> Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> "Reality Reset" Columns - http://www.vortex.com/reality


From: Einar Stefferud <stef () nma com>
Subject: Re: IP: A big story, I think: "Single-Number Plan Raises Privacy
Fears"

Pardon me, but this ENUM stuff appears to me to be a repeat of the whole 
mess that Marshall and I went through with the North American Directory 
Forum (NADF) back around 1990;-)...





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