Date: Thu, 30 Mar 95 14:44:31 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V6#032 Computer Privacy Digest Thu, 30 Mar 95 Volume 6 : Issue: 032 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Re: Fair Information Practices Re: Fair Information Practices Re: Proving your Citizenship What is Privacy? Re: Abolishing the IRS Contact your provider re the Communications Decency Act Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert Gellman Date: 30 Mar 1995 00:27:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Fair Information Practices Last week, I posted a copy of a code of fair information practices, together with references to other sources for such a code. One of those sources was listed as a 1975 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare Report. Kelly Bert Manning then posted a question about this report. He cited and discused a 1973 HEW report on privacy. Of course, that is the report that I should have cited. The wrong date was a typo. Apologies to all. Manning correctly noted that the 1973 report on "Records, Computers, and the Rights of Citizens" was a seminal privacy document. I am happy to correct to record. -- Bob Gellman Washington, DC ------------------------------ From: bo774@freenet.carleton.ca (Kelly Bert Manning) Date: 30 Mar 1995 00:52:09 -0500 Subject: Re: Fair Information Practices The CACM citation should be 1991. The link I was using to Carleton had a very long echo delay last night so I wasn't able to spend very long reading it over. It's on page 11 of CACM Vol. 34, No. 4. ------------------------------ From: ranck@earn.net (Bill Ranck) Date: 30 Mar 1995 09:02:00 GMT Subject: Re: Proving your Citizenship Organization: Universite Paris-Sud, France. Bob Casanova (tron!ops1.bwi.wec.com!cas@uunet.uu.net) wrote: Unless this has changed since the early 60's, this is incorrect. There were two Canadians in my platoon at Parris Island in late 1963. If I remember correctly, service in the US military is one way to obtain citizenship. Not sure of the details, but I'm fairly certain that it makes a person eligible, and possibly it is automatically granted. -- * Bill Ranck +33.1.69.41.24.26 ranck@earn.net * * Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA) * ------------------------------ From: wilhelm@CS.Cornell.EDU (Wilhelm Uwe G.) Date: 30 Mar 1995 09:19:54 -0500 Subject: What is Privacy? Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY 14853 Hi all, I am working on a project, in which we want to increase the protection of the privacy for users of mobile communication equipment. One of the basic (and we're talking really basic here :-) problems is to define what exactly is _privacy_. I would like to get feedback from people who are working in this area, about what they think when they hear the word privacy and comments on the entire subject (i.e. security, access control, authentication, etc.). The issue of this definition is to find some tangible, formal way to define privacy, which can in some way be implemented in software (a la protection in Operating Systems). I will collect the replies I get via e-mail and post them to the net together with my own ideas (not too much anyway :-). -- Uwe (wilhelm@cs.cornell.edu or wilhelm@lse.epfl.ch) ------------------------------ From: mikeb@ssd.fsi.com (Mike Bates x581) Date: 30 Mar 1995 12:27:57 -0600 Subject: Re: Abolishing the IRS Organization: FlightSafety-SSD, Tulsa, OK, USA poivre@netcom.com (Serrano) writes: Doesn't the IRS collect other taxes besides income?? If a sales tax were to be in place, the govt might still need to use the IRS to collect the sales tax. In that case, the IRS won't have a need to snoop since the tax will be collected from merchants etc, and not from individuals. Snooping is still snooping, even if the target is a merchant. The IRS will want to know that all sales tax owed is paid and that means certifying the total sales for a merchant and differentiating between taxable and non-taxable items. (And count on Congress to produce as many exemptions for a national sales tax as they do for the income tax. It's a great way to aid friends and punish enemies.) The record-keeping burden wouldn't be any less; it would simply be lifted from those of us who don't sell services or merchandise. (Would software consultants have to collect sales tax on their fees? Would auto mechanics? A kid who mows lawns?) If you're an individual running a small business, an IRS sales tax audit probably won't feel much more comfortable than an IRS income tax audit. To my mind, the only way to deal with the IRS is to end direct federal tax collection by repealing the 16th Amendment. The IRS would then be concerned only with collecting taxes from each state government in proportion to the state's population. The state would collect taxes to cover its own functions and its "contribution" to the Federal treasury. This doesn't eliminate the privacy problem, but it does decentralize it, which ought to make a rogue tax department easier to monitor and control. The ease of moving away from a state with an rogue tax department ought to work against abuses of power. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Mike Bates FlightSafety International, Simulation Systems Div. Principal Engineer 2700 North Hemlock Circle Computer Systems Group Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 74012 mikeb@ssd.fsi.com 918-251-0500 ext. 597 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ From: ACLU Information Date: 29 Mar 1995 16:34:34 -0500 Subject: Contact your provider re the Communications Decency Act A Cyber Liberties Alert from the ACLU Urge Your Online Service Providers to Fight the Modified Exon/Gorton Amendment! As you know from our previous Cyber Liberties Alerts, Congress is moving to dramatically restrict the free speech and privacy rights of online users. On March 23, 1995, the Senate Commerce Committee approved the Exon/Gorton bill (the so-called "Communications Decency Act", also known as S.314) as an amendment to the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995. While the proposed legislation was modified to include some defenses from criminal liability for online service providers, users are still very much at risk of both massive fines and imprisonment. The ACLU has written an open letter to online providers, copied below, that urges them to wage a full-scale fight for the rights of online users. Some providers are still actively standing up for your rights while others may not be. There are still opportunities to fight the legislation in both House and Senate, but the fight will not succeed without the concerted efforts of online users, civil libertarians, and online service providers. Remember that the Senate Commerce Committee approved the Exon/Gorton amendment despite opposition letters and petition signatures from over 100,000 online users. ACT NOW: Write to your online service providers and ask them to make a public declaration against the Exon/Gorton amendment and to push aggressively for the greatest amount of free speech and privacy for online users. (A sample letter is attached.) Please copy your letter to the following e-mail address: infoaclu@aclu.org. In addition, continue to voice your opposition to the Exon/Gorton Amendment to members of the Senate Commerce Committee and your own senators. See our previous ACLU Cyber Liberties Alerts for instructions on how to reach the Senate: gopher://aclu.org:6601. [COPY] An Open Letter to Online Providers Regarding the Exon/GortonAmendment March 28, 1995 On March 23, 1995, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to violate the civil liberties of every present and future member of the online community. The so-called "Communications Decency Act" was modified to include some defenses from criminal liability -- but these are available only to online service providers. In fact, other modifications made the legislation worse for users. The Exon/Gorton amendment remains a blatant violation of the free speech and privacy guarantees of the Constitution. We therefore urge all online providers to continue (or, if necessary, to begin) a full-scale fight for the rights of online users against the government interference embodied in the Exon/Gorton amendment. The Exon/Gorton amendment subjects online users to surveillance and imposes criminal penalties for messages deemed by some government official to be "indecent, lewd, lascivious or filthy" -- all communications protected by the First Amendment. By criminalizing the content of private messages, it would invite active interference in the basic speech of everyone using a telecommunications device. The amendment was attached to the Telecommunications Competitionand Deregulation Act of 1995, which was approved by the Commerce Committee and is being sent for consideration to the Senate floor. There are still opportunities to fight the legislation in both House and Senate, but the fight will not succeed without the concerted efforts of online users, civil libertarians, and online service providers. Sexual expression has been a fundamental part of human communication from the beginning of recorded history. The online community is no different. There is no question that talk about sex and the exchange of sexual images has contributed to the vibrant quality of online communications, and an increasing number of online subscribers. And Congress need not ban constitutionally protected forms of speech in order to protect children from sexually explicit materials. Interactive technologies allow users -- including concerned parents -- to have more control over content than any previous communications medium. Many of the traditional arguments for restricting sexually expressive material, such as radio/TV's assault on unwilling listeners or the fear that a child will wander into an adult bookstore, simply do not apply to interactive technologies. Moreover, the Exon/Gorton amendment's censorial sweep encompasses content that has nothing to do with sex -- anything deemed "indecent" or "filthy" -- subjective terms that could apply to any message outside the mainstream. The amendment would make the online community one of the most censored segments of communications media when logic dictates that it should be the least censored. The Exon/Gorton amendment also subjects an industry that has blossomed without government control to an unprecedented amount of interference and intrusion. We applaud those online providers who have both publicly declared their opposition to the Exon/Gorton amendment and who continue to fight for the constitutional rights of their subscribers. These providers recognize that no one in the online community will benefit from an amendment that seriously threatens the free flow of information and the diversity of content transmitted over online networks. To achieve the liberating potential of the information superhighway, Congress must ensure that interactive technologies enhance rather than stifle democratic values like user choice. We therefore call upon ALL online service providers to join online users and civil libertarians in the fight against the Exon/Gorton amendment. We urge online service providers to make a public declaration against the amendment and to push aggressively for the greatest amount of free speech and privacy for online users. American Civil Liberties Union "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" SAMPLE LETTER Dear [name of each of your online service providers]: I am writing, as a user of your service, to urge you to make a public declaration against the Exon/Gorton amendment to the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995. While providing defenses from criminal liability for online providers, the Exon proposal leaves online users at risk of large fines and imprisonment for constitutionally protected speech. I urge you to: *Make a public declaration against the Exon proposal. *Aggressively lobby the Senate to vote against the Exon proposal, and aggressively lobby to prevent similar proposals in the House version of the telecommunications reform legislation. *Continue to push for the greatest amount of free speech and privacy for online users. Sincerely, [name] The American Civil Liberties Union is a nationwide, nonpartisan organization of over 275,000 members. Now in its 75th year, the ACLU is devoted exclusively to protecting the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, whereever these liberties are at risk -- in a bookstore, in school, on the street, in cyberspace, wherever. The ACLU does this through legislative action, public education and litigation. -- ACLU Free Reading Room | American Civil Liberties Union gopher://aclu.org:6601 | 132 W. 43rd Street, NY, NY 10036 mailto:infoaclu@aclu.org| "Eternal vigilance is the ftp://ftp.pipeline.com | price of liberty" ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 29 Dec 1994 10:50:22 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] 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 to CPD should be submitted, with appropriate, substantive SUBJECT: line, otherwise they may be ignored. They must be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, cogent, coherent, concise, and nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome, but not personal attacks. Do not include entire previous messages in responses to them. Include your name & legitimate Internet FROM: address, especially from .UUCP and .BITNET folks. Anonymized mail is not accepted. All contributions considered as personal comments; usual disclaimers apply. All reuses of CPD material should respect stated copyright notices, and should cite the sources explicitly; as a courtesy; publications using CPD material should obtain permission from the contributors. Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of submission. If selected, they are 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 V6 #032 ****************************** .