I won't go into the many issues here, as this is an ideological digression. Cypherpunks understand that laws won't protect their privacy.
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
There is a central contradiction running through the dabase regulations proposed by many so-called "privacy advocates". To be enforceable they require massive government snooping into database activities on our workstatins and PCs, especially the activities of many small at-home businesses (such as mailing list entrepreneurs who often work out of the home). Thus, the upshot of these so-called "privacy" regulations is to destroy our last shreds of privacy against government, and calm us into blindly letting even more of the details of our personal lives into the mainframes of the major government agencies and credit reporting agenices, who if they aren't explicitly excepted from the privacy laws (as is common) can simply evade them by using offshore havesn, mutual agreements with foreign investigators, police and intelligence agencies. If cypherpunks contribute nothing else we can create a real privacy advocacy group, advocating means of real self-empowerment, from crypto to nom de guerre credit cards, instead of advocating further invasions of our privacy as the so-called privacy advocates are now doing! The first political lobbying task of any real privacy advocacy group should be pushing for the reissue of Lotus Marketplace. A "privacy" group that works to keep the public misinformed about the information we are giving out, at the same time increasing the detail of government snooping of our private commerical data, itself displays the kind of bovine bliss that is the most dangerous threat to our privacy, and ultimately our freedom. Jim Hart hart@chaos.bsu.edu