In <97Jun13.180309edt.32257@brickwall.ceddec.com>, on 06/13/97 at 06:03 PM, tzeruch@ceddec.com said:
On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, Ray Arachelian wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jun 1997, William H. Geiger III wrote:
Any state issued permit is public record. This includes your drivers license and your auto registration.
Should it include your address and phone number?
It is imperative that in a democracy that the public know who and what the state is giving permits to (there whole other issue of wether the state should be issuing permits at all but that should be left to another thread).
One important distinction:
If the state issues me a permit, they probably have a right to the information pertaining to the permit, e.g. they do need the make, model, year, and similar information about the car to issue a title or registration. If they are issuing state ID, they need to know that I am me in order to issue it. They don't need to place my mother's maiden name into the record although I think it appears on my birth certificate, and would cause problems since this is used as an informal password. My driver's license is a permit to drive, not a permit to be me. You can make a case for the database containing my age, but date of birth? Much of what appears is not necessary for the purpose stated.
So are you making the case for having the state ask every detail about your life and being able to place it in the licensing database, or only answers to those questions relevant to issuing the license?
I would say only the relevant info for issuing a license. This is not to say that the license should be anonymous. If the government is going to issue a license/permit then the citizens have a right to know who these license/permits are issued to. Ray and some others are mixing several issues: -- Should the State be involved in issueing these permits? -- Should the information be public? -- How should the information be used if it is public? I woun't go into the fist one as I don't want to get off on a tangent. As for the second one yes the information should be public and yes it will have to containe enough personal information so that I or anyone else can verify that the State is doing what they say they are. A good example of this is voting registrations in Chicago. It has long been known as the "most democratic city in the country, even the dead can vote". The third one is the one that is causing people the most greif. If as I contend with the second question that this info should and *must* be made public then there is nothing that can be done here. Public information is public information. What I or anyone else does with that information once it becomes public is no ones bussines but my own. Because some people do things you don't like with this *public* info is not an excuse for passing draconian laws and closing government action from public view. This is the type of argumants that the government uses against us on crypto (the four horseman), it is the same type of argument that is used everytime the governement wants to shit on another part of the constitution. Someone may or maynot do somthing we don't like so we are going to pass some laws and restrict the rights of the citizens even more. The saddest part is the sheeple thank them for it. -- --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html ---------------------------------------------------------------