At 10:32 PM 2/14/96 -0500, Tim Philp wrote:

If I apply for a credit card and use it to buy a hockey glove (how Canadian eh) I should not expect to be on the mailing list of every sporting goods operation in North America!

[...]

Again, I am not suggesting prior restraint. I simply want to sue the bastards who violated my expectation of privacy.

1. All so called privacy laws against databases *have* involved prior restraint, and thus necessarily involved massive violation of privacy by the state. 2. Absent prior restraint, you may have great difficulty discovering whole leaked information concerning you. 3. Such a law as you propose, without prior restraint, would not violate peoples privacy, and for that very reason it is vastly unlikely that such a law would ever be passed. The primary purpose of laws against acts that are malum prohibitum and not malum in se is to empower those that pass them, and the secondary purpose is to empower established businesses that are threatened by competition. (The digital telephony act should be called the big three preservation act.) When you say "There ought to be a law", ask yourself who would pass such a law, who would enforce such a law, and why. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com