roundtable: Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of

roundtable: Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of

Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of

W. Curtiss Priest (BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu)
Fri, 11 Aug 95 10:18:26 EDT 

Message-Id: <9508111420.AA15477@a.cni.org>
Date:         Fri, 11 Aug 95 10:18:26 EDT
From: "W. Curtiss Priest" <BMSLIB@mitvma.mit.edu>
Subject:      Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of
To: Telecommunications Policy Roundtable <ROUNDTABLE@CNI.ORG>


Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of Rights


August 3, 1995
CITS Observations on the attached article:
W. Curtiss Priest, Director

Ed Markey is a busy man, with busy staff!  But more than that, he
is one of the few Congresspeople working for the public interest in
telecommunications.

While other Congresspeople are letting industry dictate their
votes in Congress, Ed Markey is a true statesman in the field.

His two recent victorious amendments to the House bill attest to
both his skill in identifying important public issues and presenting
them compellingly to his fellow Congresspeople.

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August 3, 1995
CITS Observations on the attached article:
W. Curtiss Priest, Director
Letter to the Globe from Congressman Markey on Privacy Bill of Rights
Mail Bag

Doug Bailey's "Tech Speak" column on the new cyberthriller "The Net"
contained a throw-away line that will throw most readers for a loop. "Your
private information really isn't worth much to anybody. Sorry to have to
break that to you," he asserts in an awkward attempt to put that issue
behind us. (Aug. 4).

What is he talking about? Private information is, by definition, valuable to
the person affected and, it turns out, extremely valuable to the companies
that exploit public trust in electronic commerce. It is now possible for data
mavens to cross reference data lists by computer to produce sophisticated
consumer profiles.

When you call a department store to inquire about the price of a piece of
clothing, it is now possible to identify your phone number using Caller ID, to
use a reverse directory to establish your address, to add your name and
address to a direct mail or telemarketing database - in short, to generate a
flood of nuisance solicitation by mail or by telephone.

This gets even easier, but just as intrusive, when you actually buy some-
thing electronically on the phone, or in the grocery store, or using an on-line
hookup to a "virtual mall." The mere making of a long-distance phone call
presents the possibility of the local phone company analyzing your calling
patterns and unfairly competing for your long-distance dollar with laser-like
entreaties through telemarketing at dinner time.

All of this is a booming business. The sale of databases is a business
worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Telemarketing sales are in the hun-
dreds of billions, involving 18 million calls to Americans each day.

Congress is now considering a measure that begins to strike a more
reasonable balance between individual privacy rights and commercial need. I
have proposed a "Privacy Bill of Rights" for the information superhighway
that would require the database barons to: Give notice that your electronic
communication was being gathered into a database; acknowledge that this
database might be sold to others; and give you the right to say "NO."

Bailey's concern that paranoia about privacy might reduce the use of
computers is shared by many experts on cyberculture. But paranoia will not
be alleviated through casual dismissals as long as the rules of the electronic
road allow for the systematic wholesale hijacking of private matters.
REP. EDWARD J. MARKEY, (D-Malden)

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