Date: Thu, 22 Dec 94 10:35:16 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V5#076 Computer Privacy Digest Thu, 22 Dec 94 Volume 5 : Issue: 076 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Getting Access to PGP California Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Re: 3 Hits and you're Out? (SSN use) Re: Government vs. Citizen SSNs, Privacy and Catch 22 Followup to "No I'm not Newt" A Question about the Moderator Info on CPD, (unchanged since 11/28/94) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 18 Dec 1994 12:30:56 -0600 (CST) Subject: Getting Access to PGP Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee To get access to PGP and other cryptographic materials: 1) You must be a US or Canadian citizen currently residing in the US or Canada, and connecting to our site from a US or Canadian site. This is due to inane US export restrictions on cryptographic materials. 2) You must read the RSAREF license, file rsaref.license in the /pub/Net_info/Tools/Crypto/RSA_RSAREF_RIPEM/ directory (PGP 2.5 contains RSAREF code, which has very specific licensing criteria), and send the following, *VERBATIM*, to rsa-agree@eff.org: ---------- cut here --------------- Yes, I acknowledge that I have read the RSAREF Program License Agreement, version 2.0, March 16, 1994. I agree to be bound by its terms and conditions in my use of RSAREF and/or any programs that use it. ---------- cut here --------------- Do not include the "---------- cut here ---------------" portions. After fullfilling these legal obligations you will be told the pathname of the directory. Please note that this name changes very frequently, so if you do not get the material quickly you will have to re-do your agreement message. If you find that you cannot access this material after this process has been completed, it is probably because your site is not recognizably a US or Canadian site (e.g. *.org), in which case you should contact eff@eff.org. Please do not reveal the temporary directory name you will be given, as doing so may be a violation of US and/or Canadian federal law, and may also violate RSA licensing restrictions. 3) you may also try other sites. For PGP, try telnetting to net-dist.mit.edu, login: getpgp If you would like to see US export restrictions on cryptography removed, please send a message supporting crypto export reform to your Representatives & Senators. Congress contact information is available from ftp.eff.org, /pub/EFF/Issues/Activism/govt_contact.list ------------------------------ From: B_GIVENS@USDCSV.ACUSD.EDU Date: 21 Dec 1994 15:18:03 -0800 (PST) Subject: California Privacy Rights Clearinghouse The California Privacy Rights Clearinghouse maintains a public access site for gopher use. The command "gopher gopher.acusd.edu" can be used to access it. Alternatively its www address is "gopher://gopher.acusd.edu". Then go into "USD Campus Info Services" and you'll find the PRC there. We have all fact sheets in English and Spanish, our press releases, an upadate on Calif. and federal privacy related legislation, a hodge podege of issue papers and so on. ------------------------------ From: bandy@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu (Mike Bandy) Date: 20 Dec 1994 14:48:36 -0500 Subject: Re: 3 Hits and you're Out? (SSN use) Organization: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab Robert Ellis Smith <0005101719@mcimail.com> writes: On Dec. 5, 1994, Geoffrey Knauth asked whether the mere fact that someone inquires into your credit-bureau file may have negative consequences for you. The answer is yes. Credit grantors regard an inquiry from a company into your credit file without any evidence in your credit file that the company subsequently granted you credit as evidence that the company rejected you. To many credit grantors, three inquiries in a short period of time without any granting of credit indicates that your credit applications have been rejected three times. That's enough for other companies to reject you. Indeed, I just bought a new house and had to justify to the mortgage company a credit check made by a bank. I had no idea who they were or what they did the check for so I just told them that it was for a Visa Gold credit card that I was issued, never used and canceled. Now to figure out why the bank really was looking at my credit... -- Mike Bandy bandy@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu Johns Hopkins University / Applied Physics Laboratory ------------------------------ From: bcn@world.std.com (Barry C Nelson) Date: 21 Dec 1994 18:04:35 GMT Subject: Re: Government vs. Citizen Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Scott Nuchow wrote: But, my experience is that no matter what laws are passed, personal information will always become public, especially if it is the government that wants it. This problem is growing, especially as records and documents are fed into computers. [...] I am an attorney and, when I represent defendants, I frequently ask or demand that the government turn over documents. Usually, nothing happens and the judges go along with the excuse that either such records do not exist or that the records are secret based on some type of privilege. On the other hand, I was in Federal Court yesterday as clerk to plaintiff's attorney in a civil rts case against a city. We were asking for the list of prisoners in a lock-up cell who might have witnessed an incident. The City claimed that Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) laws protect the identities of such people under Mass. state law. The federal judge ordered the release of the information, saying that she had the power to override such a state privacy law. (and that she "does it all the time.") So the information will become public (if we use it at trial) even though the city's own attorney believed the records were protected by law. -- BCNelson ps: Wouldn't there also be Constitutional arguments for requiring that a defendant be allowed to confront and rebut the evidence against him? ------------------------------ From: Tommy the Tourist (Anon User) Date: 22 Dec 1994 04:47:16 GMT Subject: SSNs, Privacy and Catch 22 Organization: none It's interesting. I've not had an ID and recently Uncle Sam encouraged me to get some. So, I go down to the DMV (California) and they require my SSN. I go to Social Security and they required a 2nd piece of ID, like a library card. I go to the library and they require a bill from the phone company at my present address. I go to the phone company and they request both a SSN or California State ID. What a fascinating set of events! Catch 22 for sure. More interesting-- in essence I MUST have SSN to get a phone because even though they say they can't have it without my permission, the alternative is to have California ID which requires it anyhow. So how does the Privacy Act help me in this case?! Hmmmmmm. Larry Wall got us 35kg of dynamite from Pakistan. If they leave that roof door open one more night then we'll kill him. -------- For more information about this anonymous posting service,please send mail to remailer@csua.berkeley.edu with Subject: remailer-info. This message contains automatically generated keyword blocks that have been designed to resemble a threat. These blocks are not a statement of intent by the remailer operator or anyone else. -------- To respond to the sender of this message, send mail to remailer@soda.berkeley.edu, starting your message with the following 8 lines: :: Response-Key: the-clipper-key ====Encrypted-Sender-Begin==== MI@```%A^&2?(EKH_Q;E8W+E;IX]?RRFAE5!BIL4KSH;TO8 M'LXQUR)C71';%WB'E73(A Date: 22 Dec 1994 01:24:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: Followup to "No I'm not Newt" Organization: Tansin A. Darcos & Company, Silver Spring, MD USA Ted Koppel (no, not THAT one) writes: My real name is Ted Koppel. There happens to be another fellow, a broadcaster, who has the same name as I do. I took my "ten free hours" on AOL, and explored the system. Not surprisingly, I used my name (actually Tkoppel, which is a reasonable login variation). One of the places to visit on AOL is an area 'owned' by ABC News. I was in there, reading some of their stuff, and talking in one of the forums there, when I was told, in no unambiguous terms, to either get off the forum or change my name. Since my name is, after all, on my driver's license, I figured that I had a pretty good right to use it :-) So I told the fellow that. Had the circumstances been equivalent, I would have responded to such insolence with an equivalent remark, "Why doesn't the wetback change his name? I was born here!" (The *other* Ted Koppel is a Canadian Subject, just like Peter Jennings and William Shatner.) I used to be a student at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, CA. Can you guess what the first and last name of the student computing service was? Hint: his name is duplicated in the From: header of this message. So it caused problems because one time my mother called the computer room looking for me and was told that "Paul Robinson" wouldn't be back for five hours, and they weren't talking about me. (For all I know, Paul may still be working there.) When I was living in Los Angeles County, California, me and another user of a local BBS there passed comments about how Michael Jackson sounds so different on his radio program, that he sounds so different when he's on TV shows and he doesn't even sound like he's a black man from the midwest, but like a man with a British Accent. This whole set of comments went on for several weeks. We got someone, who finally said "That's a different person named Michael Jackson!" Which is when we explained that we knew that the radio personallity and the entertainer were two different people, and the whole conversation was to see who would notice. For the computer industry, you can tell who is well read by asking them "Who is Michael Jackson?" If they don't ask which one, or they fail to mention the one who has developed a structured methodology, then they really haven't had much background in this field. Then there was the story about ten years ago of 54-year-old George Bush, who won the Louisiana State Lottery. No, not THAT one. There was a woman in Northern California who could not get her application for a credit card approved because they thought she was pulling their leg. Joan Collins had a hard time explaining that's really her name, and no, she's not an actress on Dynasty. And here's an even closer one to me. I was a contractor to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for several years as a telephone operator, and we had two people named Paulette D. Smith. Before I got there it was worse because both of them were in the same building. The NRC also has a Dick Clark, a Johnny Mathis, and the executive director is James Taylor, but Doris Day retired a year ago. I also was on personal terms with Richard Bachman, who someday wants to write a book under the pen name of "Steven Kingg", to make up for Steven King's use of the pen name "Richard Bachmann" for a book called "Thinner". I suggested Mr. Bachman name his book "Fatter". :) ------------------------------ From: metaman@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca (Eugene Kachmarsky) Date: 22 Dec 1994 10:28:21 GMT Subject: A Question about the Moderator Organization: Vancouver Regional FreeNet If I may. Moderated by...? [Moderator: CPD is a moderated system. Attempts to post are turned into eMail to me and I post them if they meet the terms of our group. My name is plastered all over the maillist version. If you read it from the newsgroup comp.society.privacy then you might never see it. I am Len Levine, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. I have been the moderator of Computer Privacy Digest since December 1993. Before I took the job over it was done by the originator of the group, Dennis Rears, a systems person at the Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------] ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 28 Nov 1994 08:46:14 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD, (unchanged since 11/28/94) Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. If you read this from the comp.society.privacy newsgroup and wish to contribute a message, you should simply post your contribution. As a moderated newsgroup, attempts to post to the group are normally turned into eMail to the submission address below. On the other hand, if you read the digest eMailed to you, you generally need only use the Reply feature of your mailer to contribute. If you do so, it is best to modify the "Subject:" line of your mailing. Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of submission. An article is printed if it is relevant to the charter of the digest and is not redundant or insulting. If selected, it is printed within two or three days. The moderator reserves the right to delete extraneous quoted material. He may change the subject line of an article in order to make it easier for the reader to follow a discussion. He will not, however, alter or edit or append to the text except for purely technical reasons. A library of back issues is available on ftp.cs.uwm.edu [129.89.9.18]. Login as "ftp" with password identifying yourid@yoursite. The archives are in the directory "pub/comp-privacy". People with gopher capability can most easily access the library at gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Mosaic users will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Older archives are also held at ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V5 #076 ****************************** .