Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 16:24:47 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V3#048 Computer Privacy Digest Sat, 25 Sep 93 Volume 3 : Issue: 048 Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears Computer Privacy Digest (comp.society.privacy) Posting Guide Re: Computer Privacy Digest V3#040 Re: National Health Card Re: Health card Re: Health Card 800 numbers Re: SSNs published in the newspaper The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@pica.army.mil and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil. Back issues are available via anonymous ftp on ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 16:19:49 EDT From: Computer Privacy List Moderator Subject: Computer Privacy Digest (comp.society.privacy) Posting Guide Policy on Posting to the Computer Privacy Digest. Revision History: Revision 1.0 27 May 1992 Revision 1.1 24 April 1993 Introduction: The Computer Privacy Digest is an electronic digest dedicated to the discussion of how technology affects privacy. The digest is burst into separate articles and fed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy. The newsgroup and digest are different forms of the same forum. Discussions should be centered around the following topics: o Technology - What devices are out there now and are on the drawing boards that will enhance or take away privacy from individuals and entities. o Ramifications - What are the ramifications are current and new technology. o Public Policy - What should public policy be in regulating, not regulating, and/or using the technology. Privacy includes the right of the individual/entitity to privacy against other individuals, entities, businesses, and the various forms of government. o Education - This kind of goes with ramification. One of the functions of this forum should be to educate people on how current technology affect their privacy. This can range from corporate data bases to credit card usage. 1. Submissions: a. All submissions should be emailed to comp-privacy@pica.army.mil or posted to the comp.society.privacy newsgroup. Only submissions that are relavant to the charter of the forum will be published. Please keep text to under 76 characters per line. Personal attacks, excess flamage, or libelous postings will not be published. b. Submissions should not be sent to comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil. This address is for drop/add requests, administrative changes, and confidential requests to the moderator. Those submissions sent to that address will only be published is explicit permission is granted to publish by the poster. c. Anonymous submissions are generally not accepted. Under certain conditions an exception will be made at the Moderator's discretion. 2. Copyright Issues a. It is assumed that the copyright on material submitted to the CPD will remain with the author. In the case where the author is the submitter, it is assumed that the author explicitely grants (by the act of submitting the material) permission for the material to be published in the CPD, to be posted to the USENET group comp.society.privacy, and to any archiving of either medium. b. When the submitter is not the owner of the copyright, only those submissions which carry a notice from the submitter that the permission of the copyright holder has been obtained will be accepted. This does not apply to limited inclusions of copyrighted material that meet the fair use criteria. 3. Signal to Noise Ratio: It is my desire to keep a high signal to noise ratio. As a result a particular posting may not be published or a subject thread might be terminated when postings start to fail to shed new insight into the subject. I welcome submissions on new topics and encourage them. The quality of the digest is up the readers and posters. 4. Long Articles Articles between 10 - 50Kbytes will be split into chunks not longer than 20K and be placed in separate digests. Articles longer than 50K will be announced and be made available via FTP. For people without ftp access I will mail copies upon request. 5. Computer Privacy Digest Archives Back Issues of the Computer Privacy Digest well as back issues of the old Telecom Privacy digest are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. Ftp in as username=anonymous and password=your_email_address. Cd into the pub/privacy directory. The following files/directories are located there: READ_ME CPD Directory containing issues of the CPD telecom-priv Directory containing things relating to Dennis G. Rears Moderator, The Computer Privacy Digest ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Computer Privacy Digest V3#040 From: "Roy M. Silvernail" Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 17:51:21 CST Organization: The Villa CyberSpace, executive headquarters In comp.society.privacy, bryon@boa.meaddata.com writes: > Is the U.S. Government really going to become this irrational in its > phobia that the common citizen may actually obtain true privacy in > their communications? What has happened to our government over the > last 200 years? It hasn't taken 200 years for the situation to degrade this far. My own feeling is that the big decline began in the early part of this century. Between the rabid nationalism fostered by World War I and the vast government expansion which combatted the Great Depression, our governing entities have steadily grown their own agenda. > We once believed that what the private citizen did was > his own business until there was physical evidence that they were > harming another's Constitutional rights. Now, you believe that you > have the right to "take a preventative stance toward crime and > corruption...". Sounds good, but where does that lead us? To invading > ALL areas of our citizens lives that were once deemed private, in the > hope that you may find a potential infraction?!? That about sums it up, I think. Those who have read Alvin Toffler's {The Third Wave} may well recognize the power struggle we are witnessing as the death rattle of the Second Wave power structure. The very basis of civilization is undergoing a tremendous change. It's every bit as significant (and more so) as the transition from agriculture to industry. Those in power have grown accustomed to being in power, and the coming wave threatens their very existance. So their knees are jerking, and We The People are getting kicked. > Our forefathers are doing backflips. > > So would I if I wasn't so scared.... Sadly, it appears that the worst of the situation is yet to come. -- Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org cat /usr/philosophy/survival | PGP 2.3a public key #! /usr/local/bin/perl -p | available upon request next unless /$clue/; | (send yours) ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 05:11:08 -0400 (EST) From: ouellett Subject: Re: National Health Card President Clinton's new health care proposals includes the introduction of a national card which I guess would allow anyones complete medical history to be accessed ( at like all other governement records, keyed on the SS number). I would like to see some additional comment on this topic. Also recently my employer changed my health insurer from a decent Blue Cross insurer to a rather questionable out of state company. Every claim form contains the following authoriztion which must be signed before any claim is prossed: Authorization to Obtain Informattion I authorize any physician, medical professional,hospital, clinic, medical care institution, insurance company or reinsuring company, medical or hospital service or prepaid health plan, employer or group policyholder, contractholder, or benefit plan administratorto provide the Company and any benefit plan administators, CONSUMER REPORTING AGENCY (emphasis mine) attorneys and independent claim administrators acting on the company's behalf, with information concerning medical care, advice, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, or supplies relating to the patent, including information relating to mental illness, and any employment-related information regarding the patent, ... I understand that this agreement shall be valid for the life of the policy . I agree that a photostatic copy of this authoriztion is as valid as the original. Any comments? Are such invasive agreements standard to the industry. What does a consumer reporting agency have to do with my medical claims? Would you feel conformtable if such information could be obtained with only your SS# perhaps. Denis Ouellette ouellett@ucs.indiana.edu ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 24 Sep 93 21:59:03 PDT From: Kelly Bert Manning Subject: Re: Health card Reply-To: ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca In a previous article, slenk@hal.emba.uvm.edu (Carl A Slenk) says: >On the news last night H. Clinton mentioned a " National >Health Security Card". Anyone have any details? > It looked like a standard bank credit/ATM/debit card with a mag stripe. Here in Canada the universal health plans are administered by each province, but they have to meet federal standards to get federal funding. The reduction in funding by the feds had weakened it's ability to set standards. Originally provinces wanted to use SIN as the identifier. This is our version of SSN. Some provinces, such as BC, were very reasonable about issuing their own pseudo SIN with a leading 0 digit(same mod 10 check digit as a real SIN) if people didn't have one or wouldn't give one. Prince Edward Island has been very dogmatic about this. Infants must be assigned a real federal SIN at birth or they are not covered. Both Ontario and BC have gone to issuing their own numbers and cards. The numbers have nothing to do with SINs. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 08:42:40 EDT From: Dave Niebuhr Subject: Re: Health Card In Computer Privacy Digest V3 #047 "Winston B. Edmond" writes: >Carl A Slenk writes: > On the news last night H. Clinton mentioned a " National > Health Security Card". Anyone have any details? > >It'd be nice if its use as a national unique identifier were as least as >protected from abuse as the SSN. > -WBE > According to {Newsday}, a Long Island newspaper, some legislators were working to see that the proposed Health Card did not turn out the way the SSN did. They would include strict limitations on its disclosure to certain people in the health professions. Dave Dave Niebuhr Internet: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (preferred) niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl Senior Technical Specialist, Scientific Computing Facility Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 03:57:49 CDT From: Denis Subject: 800 numbers Is there any type of criss-cross directory or its electronic equivlent availible for finding the owner of a 800 number? I would like to find the "real" owner of a telemarketing firm offering vacation "prizes" who ripped off my not so bright sister. Denis Ouellette OUELLETT@ucs.indiana.edu ------------------------------ From: Carl Oppedahl Newsgroups: comp.society.privacy Subject: Re: SSNs published in the newspaper Date: 25 Sep 1993 10:27:20 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC In Janet Prichard writes: >Here in the state of Rhode Island we have had court documents for >our governor and chief justice of the RI supreme court published in one >of the major newspapers of the state (the governor was charged with >shooting some raccoons, the chief justice with misappropriation of funds). >Not only did the documents disclose name, address, charges, etc., but >their SSNs as well! >Do they have any legal recourse? I know this probably gets back into >the issue of whether or not the police need your SSN... Rhode Island is a bit of a privacy backwater so far as I can tell, but so are a lot of other states. A lawyer who wants to sit for the Rhode Island bar exam, and be admitted to practice, has to be fingerprinted. And you you think they keep that fingerprint to themselves, those bar exam people? I doubt it. I expect they hand it over to the authorities to add to some humongous database. Oh, and need I say it? They also demand your SSN. Do they keep it secret? I doubt it. In Iowa, if you want to find out someone's SSN (and if they are so privacy-careless that they have gotten a drivers license) you just drop by the department of motor vehicles. Their SSN will be on the public records there. -- Carl Oppedahl AA2KW (patent lawyer) 1992 Commerce Street #309 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-4412 voice 212-777-1330 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 11:41:45 -0700 From: News User Newsgroups: alt.privacy,misc.legal,alt.society.civil-liberty,comp.society.privacy From: robert@unlv.edu (Robert Cray) Subject: Re: SSNs over Police Radio Organization: University of Nevada, Las Vegas Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 18:41:39 GMT In article Mark Malson writes: >Anybody in Ohio had any experience with getting their SSN out of their >DMV records? Nevada has a scheme where you can have a drivers license number that is not your SSN, however I later discovered that if you take the 1st ten digits of this number, subtract 2,600,000,001, and divide by 2, voila! out comes the SSN. The DMV acknowledges this scheme and says the number either has to be the SSN or the SSN*2+2600000001 with the last 2 digits of the year of your birth appended... --robert ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V3 #048 ******************************