From: gtoal@an-teallach.com (Graham Toal)
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 93 06:49:10 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Big Mother can't protect our privacy
Message-ID: <7110@an-teallach.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


In article <199311101900.LAA22288@mail.netcom.com> tcmay@netcom.com writes:
 > let me say that the intent is psychological, not political. The
 > famoous questions about believing in God, having homosexual
 > experiences, washing one's hands, and so on, are devised by shrinks,
 > not designed to ferret out atheists and homos. The MMPI has been in
 > wide use since the 1950s, though it's use is declining as people file
 > lawsuits over it.)
 
Read 'The straight dope' on how these questions are scored.  Anyone who 
doesn't believe in God, for example, comes off very badly.  There are
many very nasty assumptions all through it that reflect the prejudices
of the shrinks you refer to.  It might as well have been written by
god-freaks and gay-bashers.  (Usually the same thing in my experience)

 > In Britain, in case there are some of you out there who haven't heard
 > about this, they got concerned about corporations compiling records on
 > people. Sounds like a valid concern, right? Well, the result was the
 > Data Privacy Act (or somesuch), which outlaws such records unless the
 > compiler notifies _all_ of the targets _and the government_.
 
Close but your wording is misleading.  People compiling lists in this 
country do *not* notify the people on the lists.  The latter have to
know who is compiling data on them, then put in a request (like a FOIA
request) asking to be told what that data is.  The public register just
says 'company X keeps data' - it doesn't say on whom.  In order to find
out who is holding data on you, you would have to request it off every
company registered with the DPA - and at about 10 pounds per request,
that's a good way to go broke fast.

The Data Protection Act would be better renamed the Data Secrecy Act -
it primarily protects the large list of exempt bodies who not only
do not register but are also immune from seaches; and any searches by
other means are illegal.  For instance, town councils, the police,
banks, ... - just about anyone you would actually want to find out what
they have on you.
 
 > The result is that anyone who saves computer files--like this list,
 > which of course contains e-mail addresses of hundreds of people--is
 > technically in violation of the law. Companies are finding it tough to
 > go about their business. And so on.

This may well be true; it's been posited that anyone with a usenet feed
should be registered since people post personal details in .sigs, and
the data can be searched automatically in the mail spool.  No-one to my
knowlege has done so though, and no-one is asking them to.  It's a big
bone of contention at the moment whether BBSes should register - some
see it as a way of squeezing them out of the BBS game.  Again, most
of them don't, and no-one complains.  However it's always at the back
of peoples' minds that the DPA could be used against them as an excuse
if they were ever targeted for other reasons (such as unpopular political
speech).
                                                          
G
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