---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:11:37 -0500
From: Marc Rotenberg
Julie DeFalco from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank here in DC, today sent me what her organization filed with the FTC earlier this month. Below CEI urges the FTC to be "extremely cautious in regulating the free flow of consumer information" online. The FTC will revisit the issue of online privacy regulations this June. Some excerpts from CEI's filing:
Despite plenty of speculation, there has been no demonstration of significant actual harm resulting from the commercial collection of personal data over the Internet. This is not to say that all data posted on the Internet are good. Quite the contrary. For example, the government has made it difficult, if not impossible, to live in America today without a social security number. Congress has mandated that all states use social security numbers as driver identification numbers. And Departments of Motor Vehicles have been rather cavalier about selling the data collected, including social security numbers. That is why the outcry against Lexis-Nexis, which created a database of publicly available government information, was misplaced. [...]
I haven't looked at the rest of the CEI report says, but this last statement about P-TRAK is factually incorrect. Lexis-Nexis did not create a database of "publicy available government information,' they bought credit record information from TransUnion, a credit reporting agency, and exploited a loophole in the Fair Credit Reporting Act which allowed them to sell the credit "header" information. Assuming that CEI does not question the public objection to P-TRAK, what solution do they propose? There is no contractual relationship between individuals (who are simply record subjects in thsi instance) and look-up services such as P-TRAK and therefore no opportunity for markets in any meaningful sense to operate. Isn't this a casebook example of where regulation is appropriate? Marc Rotenberg. EPIC. ================================================================== Marc Rotenberg, director * +1 202 544 9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * +1 202 547 5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave., SE Suite 301 * rotenberg@epic.org Washington, DC 20003 USA + http://www.epic.org ==================================================================