FTC: Consumer Privacy Comments Concerning Ed Nickel--P974806 From: Ed Nickel < nickel@scs.unr.edu
> I have been listening to the reports on National Public Radio and reading some of the many reports available on the internet about these issues. A comment I would like make is that surely no one really believes that for-profit corporations will heed some "self-imposed industry standard" on privacy if a buck is to be made by ignoring the standard which cannot be enforced by any substantial penalties. Even if penalties can be established through some quasi-legal means, these companies can simply change the self-created and self-imposed standard to allow the new profit making uses of no longer private information. At least one of the proposed standards allows only "limited 3rd party access" to this information and goes on to include lawyers as one group who can access the information. If some one is involved in civil action this opens up an incredible source of information to potentially unscrupulous opponents and their lawyers. I know that not all lawyers are bad but not all of them are completely moral either. I think that no issue is more important then the privacy issue in this day and age of information supremacy. This is not an issue for a regulatory agency or even for a few quick fixes by Congress. This issue needs to be addressed in the Constitution via a very carefully crafted, short and succinct amendment. |