This would be good if the bills were written well and thoughtfully. Unfortunately, they explicitly extend executive branch regulatory jurisdiction to the Net. At least the one I read did; I understand there are multiple versions. -Declan On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Black Unicorn wrote:
Pressure from the FTC Which fielded hundreds of complaints about Lexis and the social security number scrap) has prompted members of the Banking Committee to add provisions to the most recent spending bills which protect personal information (including social security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and so forth) under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This limits access to this information to credit agencies and otherwise authorized entities. (Of which I assume Lexis is not one).
It's not great protection, but it's something.
I urge everyone to take their own measures to protect personal data regardless of what some piece of paper on a library shelf says is protected. The only real protection is not to allow release of the data in the first place.
-- I hate lightning - finger for public key - Vote Monarchist unicorn@schloss.li
// declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com //