CEI tells the Federal Trade Commission to be wary of regulation

[Declan McCullagh]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 20:11:37 -0500
From: Marc Rotenberg <rotenberg at epic.org>
To: declan at well.com, fight-censorship-announce at vorlon.mit.edu
Subject: Re: FC: CEI tells the Federal Trade Commission to be wary of regulation

At 6:30 PM -0500 4/25/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>Julie DeFalco from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian
>think tank here in DC, today sent me what her organization filed with the
>FTC earlier this month. Below CEI urges the FTC to be "extremely cautious
>in regulating the free flow of consumer information" online. The FTC will
>revisit the issue of online privacy regulations this June. Some excerpts
>from CEI's filing:
>
>	Despite plenty of speculation, there has
>	been no demonstration of significant
>	actual harm resulting from the commercial
>	collection of personal data over the
>	Internet. This is not to say that all data
>	posted on the Internet are good.  Quite
>	the contrary.  For example, the government
>	has made it difficult, if not impossible,
>	to live in America today without a social
>	security number. Congress has mandated
>	that all states use social security
>	numbers as driver identification numbers.
>	And Departments of Motor Vehicles have
>	been rather cavalier about selling the
>	data collected, including social security
>	numbers. That is why the outcry against
>	Lexis-Nexis, which created a database of
>	publicly available government information,
>	was misplaced. [...]


I haven't looked at the rest of the CEI report says, but
this last statement about P-TRAK is factually incorrect.
Lexis-Nexis did not create a database of "publicy
available government information,' they bought
credit record information from TransUnion, a credit
reporting agency, and exploited a loophole in the
Fair Credit Reporting Act which allowed them to
sell the credit "header" information.

Assuming that CEI does not question the public objection
to P-TRAK, what solution do they propose? There is no
contractual relationship between individuals (who are
simply record subjects in thsi instance) and look-up
services such as P-TRAK and therefore no opportunity
for markets in any meaningful sense to operate.

Isn't this a casebook example of where regulation
is appropriate?

Marc Rotenberg.
EPIC.




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