Creating privacy crises: Society hacking
L. Todd Masco
cactus at bb.com
Sun Aug 21 16:24:52 PDT 1994
In the composition of my last message, I was thinking in the back of
my mind about how we could foment an information privacy crisis. This
could very well be a Good Thing, a societal hack to serve as a wake-
up call.
At the HOPE conference, there was someone selling CD-ROMs of the DMV
records for Oregon for $125. The same folks promise to add more states
soon: next in line is Texas.
Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information
and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have
this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress
critter and complain."
Some people don't consider their DMV records critical -- so perhaps a
mailing from a company of their credit history would open their eyes
(More effort than the $125 + postage, but probably a better yield).
It's just a thought and it would require some amount of time & money,
but it's a doable hack with finite resources.
Thoughts? Is this totally off the wall, or do y'all think that somebody
with a small but not tiny amount of money would be into doing this?
--
L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless
cactus at bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now...
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