[Jim Harper has worked on at least one free-market privacy paper that has made the rounds in DC. If Robert Gellman would like to reply, I'd be happy to turn this into an impromptu debate. Previous message: http://www.politechbot.com/p-03307.html --Declan] --- From: "Jim Harper - Privacilla.org" <jim.harperat_private> To: <declanat_private> Cc: <rgellmanat_private> Subject: Re: No broad U.S. privacy laws costs "tens of billions," study says Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 09:22:01 -0500 Declan: By my cursory review, Gellman's piece is true to form in the privacy debate, but it represents progress. The progress is that the paper admits: "Privacy is an elusive, value-laden concept, and it is hard to reach consensus on a definition." Alas, that's where the progress ends: Gellman adopts the consensus (now reaching eight bullet-point "principles") of European bureaucrats and Washington's pro-regulation advocates, then argues from there. A unique new argument: NOT participating in a frequent shopper program COSTS money. I think most people regard participating in a frequent shopper program as saving money (monetizing the value of personal information about themselves), but Gellman's baseline appears to be that people should get something for nothing. The paper rehashes identity fraud (a crime problem) and junk mail, telemarketing, and spam (inconveniences premised on merchants NOT knowing information about would-be customers); and, of course, it incoherently infers support for regulating the private sector to protect against (genuine) threat from governments. This is probably timed to coattail on press given to the Progress & Freedom Foundation study being released today showing that privacy policies are pretty much ubiquitous on mainstream commercial Web sites --- meaning consumers are in the driver's seat. (For the regulation advocates, this means it's time to move the goalposts. ;-) Of course, my market perspective will appear to be the "business" perspective to people trapped in a 60's-radical kind of "business vs. consumers" paradigm . . . . Jim Harper Privacilla.org ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Politech dinner in SF on 4/16: http://www.politechbot.com/events/cfp2002/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Wed Mar 27 2002 - 07:25:13 PST