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  From: Camden Hutchison <crh2014@columbia.edu>
  To  : <cpc@emoglen.law.columbia.edu>
  Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 16:56:32 -0500

Re: private versus government data collection

Points taken, but the problems with private data collection still
seem a little more... I don't know... tractable, maybe, than the
issue of increasing government surveillance of society.  For
instance, I have a feeling that the worst abuses in private data
collection (like sloppy control of data) can actually be solved
legally once the voting public becomes upset enough about them.

Data mining by the government is more worrisome to me because I fear
that it is less likely to raise the public ire.  I am worried that
September 11 may have really caused the sort of cultural shift
whereby ordinary people are willing to accept government monitoring
because they are afraid.  By the time that the threat of terrorism
fades from salience, the security apparatus will still be there and
Americans will have become accustomed to it.  The potential for this
type of change -- a paradigm shift in the conception and reality of
civil liberties -- is what concerns me most.

-Camden

> I would say this an oversimplification of things, and more
> importantly the
> issue is not only the use that the government can make of the all
> of this
> information but also the misuse and defective protection of the
> private
> data by private individuals. added to that is the use that others
> can make
> of the data that readily available for stealing and for which
> there is not
> penalty under American privacy laws, which only bind the
> government
> -excerpt maybe for the fair credit reporting act.
>
> So its not really either or, and its not what is worse, its the
> combined
> effect of it all.
>
> Alex
>
> --On Sunday, February 20, 2005 9:15 AM -0500 Camden Hutchison
> <crh2014@columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> >
> > The impression I am getting from reading Robert O’Harrow, Jr.’s
> book
> > is that new data collection technologies raise two distinct
> social
> > issues.  One is that private businesses now have easy access to
> > detailed personal information about us.  The other is that the
> > federal government increasingly also has access to detailed
> > personal information about us.
> >
> > I am curious as to which of these two issues other students
> feel is
> > the core problem we should be addressing in the class.  My own
> > feeling is that government use of our personal information (at
> > least when it is being used for national security purposes) is
> far
> > more worrisome than private use of that information.  Like Eben
> > said in class, the worst that marketers can do is try to
> convince
> > us to go to Disneyworld.  The government can send men with guns
> to
> > our homes.
> >
> > -Camden
> >
> >
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