From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Wed, 15 May 1996 18:42:49 +0800
To: unicorn@schloss.li
Subject: Re: Fingerprinting annoyance
Message-ID: <01I4POL8JRWW8Y5EB6@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"unicorn@schloss.li"  "Black Unicorn" 14-MAY-1996 13:21:35.36

>All this "suck it up and get printed" talk has me somewhat disconcerted
>with the list.  Have many here not consistantly indicated that privacy is
>something that must be self assured?

	In most cases, such invasions of privacy are voluntary on the
employee's part - because he/she chose to be employed there. There are some
cases in which the employee doesn't have much other choice:

A. The employer is required by the government to collect this information. Such
requirements can be direct (laws to do this or else) or indirect (laws to do
this or not get government contracts - rather like Clinton's attempt to force
contractors to give in to all union demands by forbidding replacement workers).

B. The employer is a monopsonic or ogliosonic buyer of the services that the
employee can practically provide. While an ogliosonic or monopsonic corporation
(including a group of employers that has decided to all follow one policy on
such cases) isn't a full-scale government, it's still got enough power to
qualify for limits in my book.

C. The employer is a government, and thus shouldn't be allowed to go beyond
the minimal necessary intrusion to do its job of protecting individual choices.

>I think that unless proper means are taken to safeguard information,
>social security number, license plates, and fingerprint records included,
>that the individual is perfectly within rights to take his or her own
>safeguarding initiatives.

	Social security numbers and license plates are forced upon one by
a government. One did not choose to have these pieces of identification; these
are therefore exceptions to the above rule.

>Where those methods are not intended to simply evade prosecution, but
>rather to foil extreme recordkeeping, I believe them legitimate.

	I would hope that you would also count evading illegitimate prosecution
(drug laws, censorship laws, et al) as legitimate uses of them. I would.
	-Allen