At 05:45 PM 5/25/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

such as monopolistic and oglipolistic corporations). You do have a choice in dealing with other entities. I make that choice; I minimize my use of a credit card, for instance. I've had months where my bill was $0.00. Now, if the agency in question is required to collect such information because of coercion, then that's wrongful, and that information shouldn't be retransmitted.

Righ. But in addition to the forcible acquisition of information, there's the unwitting acquisition - you are never informed that party A has transmitted information X to party B, who in turn passed it to C, who garbled it and then passed the erroneous info to D.... I'm a raving anarcho-capitalist, and I see not the slightest ethical problem in requiring people to tell me what information they're gathering on me. At that point I can make an informed decision to deal or not deal with them - and that's a complex decision. I might well prefer to do business with, say, Tim's House O' Stuff even though it's collecting more info than I'd prefer, if there are compensatory factors. But I can't weigh my options in a void. -- Bruce Baugh bruce@aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce