more on I am glad he is not worried djf Chertoff: Privacy fears not justified

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bradley Malin <malin () cs cmu edu>
Date: August 11, 2005 4:25:00 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, EEkid () aol com
Subject: Re: [IP] I am glad he is not worried djf Chertoff: Privacy  
fears not justified


Personally, I find it distressing that Chertoff relates the notion of  
"the general American" and loyalty cards to the submission of  
personal information to the federal government for homeland security  
and other types of surveillance/security (word usage depends on  
whichever side of the coin is facing up after the toss) monitoring.

The "average" American is for the most part unaware of how their  
information, collected under loyalty programs, is used by the data  
collecting organizations.  Now, I don't believe that most people  
would pull out of loyalty programs if they were made completey aware  
of all the ways in which their information is, or could be, used.   
But I am inclined to believe that a non-trivial number of people  
would use more caution if they knew that their information could be  
subpoenaed, or legally seized via a warrent, and possibly used  
against them (possibly without their knowledge).

And in today's society, people are starting to turn back from their  
knee-jerk 9/11 reaction of "give the government whatever they need and
whenever they need it".  The American public is much more suspicious  
of how the government collects and uses personal information than  
organizations and their loyalty programs.  We saw this with the crash  
and burn of the proposed data mining (a.k.a. exploratory data fusion  
and analysis) investigations of the TIA program and I'm sure we'll it  
again.

Maybe Chertoff would be willing to draft a Privacy Rule for the  
collection, dissemination, and use of personal data that has been  
sequestered by homeland security agencies?

-brad

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