Enough to make you puke: gore on privacy

["Count of Monte Carlo" <catrancher@hotmail.com>]

`one of the worst things to happen to privacy since Alan Funt'






Friday July 31 12:24 PM EDT 

Gore Seeks New Web Privacy Laws

TED BRIDIS Associated Press Writer



WASHINGTON (AP) - Calling privacy a ``basic American value,'' Vice 
President Al Gore pressed today for new federal laws to prevent 
companies from collecting personal information from children who use 
Internet Web sites, chat rooms and e-mail. 

Among its first steps toward crafting an ``Electronic Bill of Rights,'' 
the Clinton administration also wants to suspend plans to assign every 
American a health-care ID number and proposed a new role for the Office 
of Management and Budget in writing privacy rules. 

Gore said citizens' rights to decide whether to allow companies to 
collect personal information, dictate what type of data is collected and 
review it for accuracy ``do not have sufficient protections by a long 
shot.'' 

Gore, who first described such a bill of rights in May, pressed for new 
laws against identity fraud and for new protections of consumer credit 
reports. 

``Privacy is a basic American value, in the information age and in every 
age,'' Gore said. ``It must be protected. We need an electronic bill of 
rights for this electronic age.'' 

Gore said the announcements ``will make technology consistent with 
America's oldest values.'' 

Privacy has become a politically popular issue, amid growing concern 
among Americans about high-tech intrusions into their personal lives. 

``We're beginning to see the flesh put on the bones,'' said Deirdre 
Mulligan, a privacy specialist at the Center for Democracy and 
Technology in Washington. ``These are very specific proposals that 
respond to issues that advocates and the public have raised.'' 

Critics have complained about a 1996 law that would assign everyone a 
computer number to track health care from birth to death, noting that it 
allows insurance companies, doctors, drug stores and others to release 
medical records for broadly defined ``health care operations.'' 

Gore today called it ``one of the worst things to happen to privacy 
since Alan Funt,'' who created the ``Candid Camera'' television series. 

``It appears the White House is at least beginning to take privacy 
seriously,'' said Barry Steinhardt, president of the Electronic Frontier 
Foundation, a civil liberties group. He called it ``a very important 
step that significantly improves the outlook for medical privacy.'' 

Children on the Internet would find new protections under Gore's plans. 

Federal regulators said this summer that many companies collect personal 
information from children online, sometimes asking for their names and 
e-mail addresses - even questions about their personal finances - using 
animated characters or as an incentive to join a contest or play a game. 

``You don't do business with an 11-year-old without parental consent,'' 
said Robert Pitofsky, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, which 
already has asked Congress for new laws limiting how Web sites collect 
information from kids. 

``The information that is requested on these Web sites appears to be so 
innocent, very harmless,'' said Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., who 
introduced a bill that would require companies to obtain a parent's 
permission before they collect information from children under 12. ``But 
they do invade a family's privacy and raise safety concerns.'' 

The White House is not calling for relaxed restrictions on powerful 
data-scrambling technology, called encryption, which helps keep e-mail 
and other messages confidential but also can be used by criminals. 

``On the main privacy issues, the ones that confront the country today, 
the administration is still reluctant to make the hard decisions,'' said 
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information 
Center, which has lobbied for broader use of encryption. 

The administration also is pledging its support for the online industry 
to find ways to better protect the privacy of adults on the Web, such as 
recent efforts by the Online Privacy Alliance, a newly formed group of 
50 companies and trade groups that include Microsoft, America Online and 
IBM. 

Gore recently warned computer industry executives that if 
self-regulation does not work, ``we will be obliged to take action 
ourselves.'' The FTC told Congress it should pass tough new privacy laws 
for adults if the industry's own efforts do not improve by year's end. 

Advocates generally praised plans for the new federal privacy office, 
but noted that OMB - the new office's parent agency - has itself been 
criticized for failing to enforce existing federal privacy laws. 



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