From: Bruce Baugh <bruce@aracnet.com>
Date: Mon, 27 May 1996 06:37:46 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Children's Privacy Act
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960526010616.006a3d14@mail.aracnet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 05:45 PM 5/25/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

>such as monopolistic and oglipolistic corporations). You do have a choice in
>dealing with other entities. I make that choice; I minimize my use of a credit
>card, for instance. I've had months where my bill was $0.00. Now, if the
>agency in question is required to collect such information because of coercion,
>then that's wrongful, and that information shouldn't be retransmitted.

Righ. But in addition to the forcible acquisition of information, there's
the unwitting acquisition - you are never informed that party A has
transmitted information X to party B, who in turn passed it to C, who
garbled it and then passed the erroneous info to D....

I'm a raving anarcho-capitalist, and I see not the slightest ethical problem
in requiring people to tell me what information they're gathering on me. At
that point I can make an informed decision to deal or not deal with them -
and that's a complex decision. I might well prefer to do business with, say,
Tim's House O' Stuff even though it's collecting more info than I'd prefer,
if there are compensatory factors. But I can't weigh my options in a void.

--
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce