[Obviously the FTC has little choice in this matter. But it seems to that America's chief privacy enforcers could be a wee bit more sensitive to the dangers of collecting personal information -- after all, they insist that private firms are. For instance, the FTC could put a notice at the top of a sign-in sheet saying: "Warning: This information may be made public." Or it could have a policy of collecting only the minimal information that it needs. And so on. --Declan] --- http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50947,00.html [...] FTC snoops: The agency responsible for protecting privacy is being forced to do exactly the opposite. On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission sent e-mail to everyone who attended its "Get Noticed" privacy workshop last December, telling them their personal information was about to become public. [...] EU glitch: Across the Atlantic, the European Union's "Working Group on Data Protection" has a far more innovative way to reveal personal information. On Friday, the EU's Eva Salger-Kuhn accidentally sent e-mail to everyone in the working group's database -- on one long "To:" line. This is, remember, the European bureaucracy charged with creating and enforcing safe data-use practices. [...] --- From: Glb Workshop [mailto:GLBWORKSHOPat_private] Sent: Fri 3/8/2002 10:40 AM Subject: Notice to GLB "Get Noticed" Workshop Registrants This is to let you know that the Commission must respond to a request made under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for information about those who registered to attend the GLB "Get Noticed" Workshop held on December 4, 2001. The Commission is required to disclose to the requester the names and contact information of those who registered to attend in their professional capacity. This includes information you provided when registering for the workshop, such as your name, company, phone number, e-mail address, and if you provided it, your fax number. We anticipate that the information will be released to the requester during the week of March 11, 2002. While we do not know how the requester will use the information, we believe it is important to notify you that we are obligated to provide your professional information under the FOIA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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