Re: Fair Credit Reporting Act and Privacy Act

At 09:21 AM 2/9/96 -0500, Tim Philp wrote:
>	Private individuals are not what I was refering to. I am more
>concerned about corporations who hold information about me and release it
>to the highest bidder. When it comes to individual versus corporate
>rights, I am clearly on the side of the individual. 

Remember that there's a major difference between "corporations"
and "business"; you seem to be mixing them up.  A corporation is
a legal fiction that treats a cooperative effort by one or more people
as if it were a person in itself, and normally involves limiting the
liability of the corporation's investors by putting it all on the
fictional person.  A business is what one or more people do to make money.
Most corporations are businesses, though not all.

Governments can legitimately tell corporations what to do because
that's part of the price of the legal fiction; a government can't
abuse a corporation because you can't beat up a legal fiction,
though it can say "Poof!  You're not a legal fiction any more",
and conversely, if the people who own the legal fiction don't like
what the government's telling it to do, they can dissolve it.
(Governments also enjoy regulating non-corporate businesses,
but they're no longer on solid moral ground.)

>	I have also not suggested some form of prior restraint that would 
>require government access to computers. I simply suggest that should a 
>violation occur, that I have the right of civil and criminal law as a 
>recourse to both compensate me for my loss of privacy as well as deter 
>future damage. A company knowing that civil and criminal penalties could 
>result from a violation would take extra care to ensure the security of 
>my data.

How are you going to _know_ that a "violation" occurred, if company A
tells company B your address or favorite liquor?  Only by having access
to the records of both companies.  Getting that through the courts,
for only the parts of their information relevant to you, is better than
blanket permission for the government to rummage through their files,
but after the first lawsuit lets investigators in, everything they've got
is clam bait anyway.  It's still major privacy violation - for the company
whose machines are being violated, and for the non-suing individuals
whose data is also on those machines.  
#--
#				Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com / billstewart@attmail.com +1-415-442-2215
# http://www.idiom.com/~wcs

On Fri, 9 Feb 1996, Bill Stewart wrote:

> How are you going to _know_ that a "violation" occurred, if company A
> tells company B your address or favorite liquor?  Only by having access
> to the records of both companies.  Getting that through the courts,
> for only the parts of their information relevant to you, is better than
> blanket permission for the government to rummage through their files,
> but after the first lawsuit lets investigators in, everything they've got
> is clam bait anyway.  It's still major privacy violation - for the company
> whose machines are being violated, and for the non-suing individuals
> whose data is also on those machines.  

I agree that this is a problem but I still feel that an individual should 
have more rights than a corporation. It is true that there is a 
possiblity of the owners of the corporation may have their rights 
diminished, but you have to balance this against the protection that they 
get by being incorporated. Either the files belong to the corporation or 
they belong to the owner or shareholders. If they belong to the 
corporation, the individual wins the rights contest. If I follow your 
scenario, one need only form a corporation to avoid responsibility for 
any violations of the law.
I wish to reiterate here and now, that I am NOT advocating government 
access to computers or files. I am simply suggesting that data 
corporations should be required to take responsibility for the data that 
is in their care. If they do not take such care, they should be subject 
to sanction.

Regards, 
Tim Philp