Information

Keeping Our Business Secret

This entry was posted in Federal Government Information Law Libertarianism on by

How not to be accountable: don’t tell anyone what you are really doing (PDF).

In 2004 the federal set a new record for keeping secrets. Last year, the federal government employees chose to classify information a record 15.6 million times, according to new government figures released this week. The figure is 10 percent higher than the total in the previous year. And when given a choice, government employees last year chose to keep their new secrets longer than in years past: Two thirds (66 percent) of the time government employees chose to keep those new secrets for more than a decade. At the same time, the flow of old secrets to the public dropped to its lowest point in nearly a decade to 28 million pages.

In fairness to the bushies increases in classification started trending upward again around the beginning of clinton’s second administration. The clinton folks were, though, declassifying more documents than they were classifying while the bushies have brought declassification to a near standstill.
Makes me wonder just what they are hiding and why they don’t want us, their employers, to know.

Public Servants?

This entry was posted in Constitution Democracy Government Information Law Regulation on by

Why are these people even in office?

North Carolina cities and other government agencies are pursuing the authority to sue citizens who ask to see public records.
Lawyers for local governments and the University of North Carolina are talking about pushing for a new state law.
That law would allow pre-emptive lawsuits against citizens, news organizations and private companies to clarify the law when there is a dispute about providing records or opening meetings.

I can think of only one reason for public records not to be disclosed: they contains personal information that should not be released without an individuals consent. Anything else should be provided right now accompanied by a bow and a “May I help you with anything else?”
Via Politech.

Security Freeze? Not enough!

This entry was posted in Capitalism Domestic Terrorism Economics Information Libertarianism Regulation on by

The Washington legislature is considering legislation that will give consumers the authority:

….to put a security freeze on their credit-reporting file. A security freeze lets the consumer prevent anyone from looking at his or her own credit reporting file for purposes of granting credit unless the consumer chooses to let that particular business look at the information.

This is a partial step in the right direction. It is not enough and will not as article suggests give consumers the ability to prevent identity thieves from getting credit in their names.
As I commented last month individuals must own their personal information and:

No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.

Anything less is a recipe for theft underwritten by the very governmental institutions alleged to be our protectors.

Choicepoint

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Federal Government Government Information Law Libertarianism on by

Most of you are, by now, aware of the Choicepoint fiasco:

Criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed critical personal data stored by ChoicePoint Inc., a firm that maintains databases of background information on virtually every U.S. citizen, MSNBC.com has learned.
The incident involves a wide swath of consumer data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports and other information. ChoicePoint aggregates and sells such personal information to government agencies and private companies.

Ed Foster notes:

What the ChoicePoint fiasco really shows we need, however, are baseline federal privacy standards that apply to all industries. Although it’s certainly ironic that the “nation’s leading provider of identification and credential verification services” couldn’t figure out it was selling our info to a ring of criminals, the real problem is that data brokers like ChoicePoint can legally sell our information to just about whomever they please.

Federal standards and regulations are invariably broken and generally never written with individual citizens in mind but Ed’s last point hits the nail on the head.
No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.
The Privacy Digest has more information on both what the Choicepoint breach means to individuals and what information they may have about you.