--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 15:43:17 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: qnx.com: localhost [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: 0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org Subject: Consumer privacy debate heats up Date: Tue, 26 Aug 1997 15:39:19 -0400 From: glen mccready <glen@qnx.com> Resent-From: 0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org X-Mailing-List: <0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org> archive/latest/2153 X-Loop: 0xdeadbeef@substance.abuse.blackdown.org Precedence: list Resent-Sender: 0xdeadbeef-request@substance.abuse.blackdown.org Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <nev@bostic.com> Forwarded-by: chuck yerkes <Chuck@Yerkes.com> Forwarded-by: David HM Spector <spector@zeitgeist.com> Consumer privacy debate heats up -- Chicago Tribune WASHINGTON -- An Internet entrepreneur, Ram Avrahami, says he believes he has the legal rights to his name and other personal information, such as his shopping habits, credit records and medical history. But the companies that profit from collecting personal information on Avrahami and millions of other Americans see matters differently. Since the information is collected legally and resides in their databases, they say they have reasonable claim to it. Those divergent views are colliding. While the companies stand their ground, Avrahami hopes to help start a grass-roots effort this fall to demand that the data-gatherers obtain permission before buying and selling information about an individual. More than just seeking a say in whether and how personal data is marketed, the suburban Virginia resident and his allies want to receive royalties. They wonder why only the companies should make money off the brisk commerce in their personal data. "They have to face reality," says Avrahami, 34. "They cannot sell people's names without explicit permission. It's a very simple concept." The debate is taking on new urgency as the information economy grows, and creating its own backlash, as giant America Online learned earlier this summer. AOL was compelled to beat a hasty, embarrassing retreat after users rebelled at the company's plan to sell their telephone numbers to marketers. The omnipresence of computers and the Internet have made it ever easier for businesses and government agencies to obtain, link and sell data that often reveal intimate information about millions of Americans. This has increased public anxiety about the uses such databases, which teem with information many people would be reluctant to tell even their closest friends: medical conditions revealed by tracking the pharmaceuticals purchased, mortgage borrowing obtained from real-estate records, household incomes lifted from product-warranty cards conscientiously filled out by unwitting consumers. The data-ownership question is complicated by the law's seeming ambivalence. While most states have laws forbidding the appropriation of one's name for someone else's commercial benefit, those laws have mainly been applied to celebrities, not the selling for profit of the ordinary person's name and personal information by database companies. But is that right? Not according to Anne Wells Branscomb. In her 1994 book "Who Owns Information? From Privacy to Public Access," the communications and computer lawyer, wrote: "Our names and addresses and personal transactions are valuable information assets worthy of recognition that we have property rights in them. "Unless we assert these rights, we will lose them. If such information has economic value, we should receive something of value in return for its use by others." There is clearly a developing view that agrees with her. Besides Avrahami and his allies, who say they are forming a new organization to receive, on behalf of their members, payment for the use of names or take legal action, others are challenging the data gatherers. Earlier this summer, for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union, launched its "Take Back Your Data" campaign. Besides attempting to educate Americans on the issue, the ACLU intends to push for sweeping federal legislation to re-establish individuals' control over use of their personal information. The ACLU sees this as an important personal privacy issue, especially regarding medical data. "You provide information to your health care provider solely for the purpose of treating you and making you better," said Donald Haines, a legislative counsel on privacy issues at the ACLU. "Suddenly all of these people end up acting like they have a right to your data," including law enforcement, research, insurance and public health officials. "In our view, that's nothing less than embezzlement of your data," Haines said. In Congress, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, are co-sponsoring a bill that would hinder the marketing of personal information by making it illegal for companies to sell Social Security numbers without first getting permission. Meanwhile, Congress also triggered a Federal Trade Commission study of database practices, such as the gathering of personal information without an individual's permission. The FTC is expected to issue its conclusions by year's end. At FTC hearings in June, John Ford, vice president for privacy and external affairs for Equifax Inc., the large consumer and business credit reporting service, summed up both sides of the argument. "Ownership of data. There's some question about people saying this is information that belongs to me, and therefore you shouldn't be using it." "Others would argue that it's ... not your information, it is information about you. So ownership becomes a kind of red herring issue for control of the data, maybe even remuneration for deciding to let your data be used," he said. In an interview, he later said his company has no official position on who owns personal information. And he repeated a warning he made at the hearings against overreaction by government regulators, saying "we ought to be working with tweezers rather than a vise grip," in dealing with whatever problems arise when database companies err. Martin Abrams, vice president for Experian Inc., formerly TRW, another large credit-reporting company, said there is ample legal basis for the companies to be able to control the information they gather. "You don't have a choice about being in a consumer data base. ... The integrity of the data base would impacted if consumers could selectively opt to be part of it or not to be part of it," he said. "At the same time, we have a long-established norm that when it comes to the marketing use of information, consumers should have the full ability to opt out of that marketing use. And responsible organizations should respect that consumer choice." Abrams added. Ford and Abrams views infuriate Bob Bulmash, president and founder of Private Citizen Inc. of Naperville, Ill., an anti-telemarketing group. Bulmash intends to join Avrahami in creating a new group called The Named that would assert its members ownership rights to their names and personal information. "Why don't we just have Mr. Ford give us his income, how many children he has ... how much he paid for his car, what's his mortgage, his Social Security number? May I sell that information? It's just information about him. That's an absurd position he's putting forward." According to Leonard Rubin, a Chicago lawyer and expert on privacy issues, the debate gets convoluted because the laws governing it are "snarled." "As far as personal data is concerned -- what toothpaste did I use this morning to brush my teeth? You don't know that. Nobody knows that," Rubin said. "But once I make that public, I have forfeited my rights to it, unless I make it public under certain conditions." And courts have tended to agree that consumers who engage in commercial transactions with companies have essentially gone public. In any event, Avrahami says he has property rights to his name under laws in many states that prevent someone from commercially benefiting by using a person's name or likeness without his permission or payment. Avrahami was the losing party in a Virginia lawsuit last year. He had sued U.S. News & World Report, accusing the publication of violating state law by selling his name to Smithsonian magazine. But the judge ruled that Avrahami hadn't proved his name had value and had hurt his case by using a variant of his name to detect who sold his personal information. Still, Avrahami is undeterred. "If someone in Illinois tries to use Michael Jordan's name for commercial benefit, Michael Jordan would be able to assert his right (to his name.) It already has been applied to celebrities. Now it just needs to be applied to common folks like you and me," he said. "There's a difference in the value but not in the right. It doesn't matter if it's $10,000 or ten cents." --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/