Kudos to Sen. Lieberman for making an effort to inject this into the presidential campaign. But of course the good senator singles out corporations, saying he wants to increase data collection and use regulations that U.S. firms must abide by. Lieberman's web page complains about Americans being at the "mercy of huge corporations" but doesn't use the same language to discuss government intrusions into our personal sphere. Those intrusions are far more worrisome. If U.S. politicians and advocacy groups truly care about privacy, they would seek to eliminate the laws and regulatory agencies that endanger it the most. Those include, in no particular order, drug prohibition (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,40532,00.html), the federal income tax, and Social Security. The issue of drug prohibition should speak for itself: the USA Patriot Act pales by comparison with the gradual repeal of the Fourth Amendment over the last few decades thanks to increasingly intrusive police powers. The income tax requires Americans to report hundreds of very personal bits of information to the IRS, and Social Security has branded us with a number that was never intended to be used as a form of global authentication but is. A candidate or advocacy group who put privacy first would legalize drugs, dismantle the IRS and replace income taxes with a sales tax or flat tax (something Democrat Jerry Brown wanted to do in the 1992 presidential campaign), and phase out mandatory Social Security in favor of offering Americans a choice about whether to participate in the government program or instead use personal retirement accounts. A partial personal retirement account is even what Candidate Bush proposed in 2000 (http://www.socialsecurity.org/). If candidates and advocacy groups bemoan a loss of privacy but don't address the underlying issues, it's reasonable to question what their priorities are. -Declan --- From: "Calvino" <calvino78@private> To: <declan@private> Subject: Presidential privacy proposal Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 14:40:37 -0500 Thought the politech readers might be interested in this: http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/01/09/rtr1205216.html The entire plan is on the Lieberman Web site at: http://www.joe2004.com/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6672 Sen. Lieberman rolls out new U.S. privacy plan Reuters, 01.09.04, 1:33 PM ET By Andrew Clark MANCHESTER, N.H. (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman proposed a plan Friday to give Americans more control of their personal data as well as more access to government information. Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut who has been active in a debate in Congress over how to protect privacy in the digital age, conceded the issue had yet to become a hot topic in the Democratic primary race. But he said the rapid rise of identity theft, with an estimated one in eight U.S. adults falling victim in the past five years, had created a deep groundswell of concern about the security of personal financial information. "When you start to talk about things, people are agitated about this because they know their information is being held on computers somewhere and they worry," Lieberman told New Hampshire Public Radio. His proposal would double penalties for identity theft and encourage federal regulators to pressure credit reporting agencies to make it easier for victims of the crime to repair their tarnished financial records. It would also require financial institutions to get customers' explicit permission before sharing their data with or selling it to other companies -- something the financial industry has strenuously resisted as unnecessary and damaging to marketing efforts that can benefit consumers. ... _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)
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