[IP] more on I am glad he is not worried djf Chertoff: Privacy fears not justified
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bradley Malin <malin@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: August 11, 2005 4:25:00 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx, EEkid@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] I am glad he is not worried djf Chertoff: Privacy
fears not justified
Personally, I find it distressing that Chertoff relates the notion of
"the general American" and loyalty cards to the submission of
personal information to the federal government for homeland security
and other types of surveillance/security (word usage depends on
whichever side of the coin is facing up after the toss) monitoring.
The "average" American is for the most part unaware of how their
information, collected under loyalty programs, is used by the data
collecting organizations. Now, I don't believe that most people
would pull out of loyalty programs if they were made completey aware
of all the ways in which their information is, or could be, used.
But I am inclined to believe that a non-trivial number of people
would use more caution if they knew that their information could be
subpoenaed, or legally seized via a warrent, and possibly used
against them (possibly without their knowledge).
And in today's society, people are starting to turn back from their
knee-jerk 9/11 reaction of "give the government whatever they need and
whenever they need it". The American public is much more suspicious
of how the government collects and uses personal information than
organizations and their loyalty programs. We saw this with the crash
and burn of the proposed data mining (a.k.a. exploratory data fusion
and analysis) investigations of the TIA program and I'm sure we'll it
again.
Maybe Chertoff would be willing to draft a Privacy Rule for the
collection, dissemination, and use of personal data that has been
sequestered by homeland security agencies?
-brad
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