On Fri, 9 Feb 1996, Bill Stewart wrote:
How are you going to _know_ that a "violation" occurred, if company A tells company B your address or favorite liquor? Only by having access to the records of both companies. Getting that through the courts, for only the parts of their information relevant to you, is better than blanket permission for the government to rummage through their files, but after the first lawsuit lets investigators in, everything they've got is clam bait anyway. It's still major privacy violation - for the company whose machines are being violated, and for the non-suing individuals whose data is also on those machines.
I agree that this is a problem but I still feel that an individual should have more rights than a corporation. It is true that there is a possiblity of the owners of the corporation may have their rights diminished, but you have to balance this against the protection that they get by being incorporated. Either the files belong to the corporation or they belong to the owner or shareholders. If they belong to the corporation, the individual wins the rights contest. If I follow your scenario, one need only form a corporation to avoid responsibility for any violations of the law. I wish to reiterate here and now, that I am NOT advocating government access to computers or files. I am simply suggesting that data corporations should be required to take responsibility for the data that is in their care. If they do not take such care, they should be subject to sanction. Regards, Tim Philp