At 01:50 PM 8/4/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:

At 10:14 PM 8/3/96 -0700, you wrote:

...

Take a look at: http://www.spiritone.com/cgi-bin/plates Feed it an Oregon licence plate number and it will feed you back all sorts of info about the person/victim.

It's interesting to know that Senator Hatfield's wife's birthday is 1/17/29, and that the title to the car is held with a security interest by the US SENATE EMPLOYEES FEDERAL CREDIT, and that (at least) Social Security Numbers weren't listed for the plates I checked. Also that, unlike many states, the Governor doesn't have License Plate #1.

It turns out that I am indirectly (two steps removed) responsible for this information being publicized on the 'net. I bought a copy of a CDROM that included this data (from a person who bought this data from the State of Oregon on magtape), and a friend of mine got a copy from me and made a copy for his friend, who decided to put it on the web as an accessible item. In any case, contrary to Alan Olsen's implication, I think that this kind of thing is a step forward for freedom. Government agencies already have access to this kind of information whenever they want; it's only the individuals who don't. Indeed (as my friend pointed out, correctly) this information is only considered valuable because not everyone has it. Making this information available puts government-types under the same "gun" as the rest of us already were. It is now being seen that driver's licenses, while ostensibly merely being a certification that we know how to drive, are most useful to government as a way to "legitimately" collect information on us, including our address and age. Since the function of credentialing is being implemented using encryption in ways to protect privacy, I suggest that we should push the government in that direction. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com