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Re: Personal webpages can get you fired [CNN]
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An entity claiming to be Tim May wrote:
:
: And as with the AOL case of Timothy McVeigh (no, not _that_ one) being
: kicked out of the Navy for labelling himself as "gay" and as a "boy hunter"
: on one of his AOL profiles, there are already calls for new privacy laws.
:
: Which misses the point. By illegalizing the keeping or disclosing of
: lawfully obtained information, greater harm is done.
:
: I heard Nadine Strossen of the ACLU arguing today that more laws are needed
: to "prevent" these "abuses." In fact, more _technology_ is what's needed.
: The technology of Web proxies, remailers, nyms, and such.
:
This issue was covered in _The Right to Privacy_ by Ellen Alderman and
Carolyn Kennedy. The book was misplaced during my recent move, and I didn't
get very far through it. I do remember that the current legal standard for
invasion of privacy depended upon whether the information was gathered from
a public medium. A psychiatric evaluation or Telco records would not be
considered a public forum, so could not be used by an employer (unless the
evaluation was given by the employer, I guess). A web page, on the other hand
is about as public as you can get.
I would agree that with the right technologies (proxies, remailers, etc) there
would be a de facto protection of privacy, and (insert the not-even-close-to-
a-lawyer disclaimer here) that there should be some legal basis that since
the effort was made to hide the True Name, the content could not be used, if
there were a compromise. Looks like a win-win.
It still doesn't deal with morons who *provide* their employers with the
ammo to terminate employment. You can make a system foolproof, but you can't
make it damnfoolproof.
Mark
- --
[] Mark Rogaski "That which does not kill me
[] [email protected] only makes me stranger."
[]
[] finger [email protected] for PGP key
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