FC: Libertarians rally, a little late, to oppose privacy regs

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38878,00.html

   Regulating Privacy: At What Cost?
   by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

   3:00 a.m. Sep. 19, 2000 PDT
   WASHINGTON -- Privacy advocates who successfully transformed such
   previously arcane matters as credit bureau databases and DoubleClick
   cookies into mainstream concerns are close to winning a truly epic
   battle.

   After years of agitating by liberal groups like the American Civil
   Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, both
   Democrats and Republicans are suddenly expressing their support for
   sweeping new regulations of U.S. businesses.

   Yet schemes like a federal privacy commission -- suggested this year
   by a bipartisan duo in Congress -- don't exactly cheer free-market
   organizations, which have been largely silent in this debate so far.

   In response to increasingly aggressive bills and shifting public
   opinion, libertarian groups in Washington and elsewhere have begun to
   quietly gird themselves for an all-out battle in new and unfamiliar
   terrain.

   George Mason University's Mercatus Center will hold a privacy event on
   Tuesday populated with laissez-faire economists, while the Competitive
   Financial Privacy, which blasts private-sector regulations.

   "Why did it take so long? Because there are more of 'them' than there
   are of us -- advocates of liberty and limited government have too many
   battlements to defend," says David Boaz, vice president of the Cato
   Institute.

   The Cato Institute and other like-minded groups generally oppose
   government regulation of what information firms can and cannot
   collect, arguing that consumers should make up their own minds
   instead.

   Some libertarians also stress the economic benefits of
   information-sharing by saying it lowers prices. "What the
   privacy-regulation advocates just don't get is the benefits of
   information," Boaz says. "There's a positive value to being offered
   things that will interest you, and it's hardly something to be
   feared."

   [...]




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