87,364 research outputs found
Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans
To combat terrorism, Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked Congress to "enhance" the government's ability to conduct domestic surveillance of citizens. The Justice Department's legislative proposals would give federal law enforcement agents new access to personal information contained in business and school records. Before acting on those legislative proposals, lawmakers should pause to consider the extent to which the lives of ordinary Americans already are monitored by the federal government. Over the years, the federal government has instituted a variety of data collection programs that compel the production, retention, and dissemination of personal information about every American citizen. Linked through an individual's Social Security number, these labor, medical, education and financial databases now empower the federal government to obtain a detailed portrait of any person: the checks he writes, the types of causes he supports, and what he says "privately" to his doctor. Despite widespread public concern about preserving privacy, these data collection systems have been enacted in the name of "reducing fraud" and "promoting efficiency" in various government programs. Having exposed most areas of American life to ongoing government scrutiny and recording, Congress is now poised to expand and universalize federal tracking of citizen life. The inevitable consequence of such constant surveillance, however, is metastasizing government control over society. If that happens, our government will have perverted its most fundamental mission and destroyed the privacy and liberty that it was supposed to protect
A Feeling of Unease About Privacy Law
This essay responds to Daniel Solove\u27s recent article, A Taxonomy of Privacy. I have read many of Daniel Solove\u27s privacy-related writings, and he has made many important scholarly contributions to the field. As with his previous works about privacy and the law, it is an interesting and substantive piece of work. Where it falls short, in my estimation, is in failing to label and categorize the very real harms of privacy invasions in an adequately compelling manner. Most commentators agree that compromising a person\u27s privacy will chill certain behaviors and change others, but a powerful list of the reasons why this is a negative phenomenon that the law should seek to prevent is not a significant attribute of Solove\u27s taxonomy. That omission left this reader a little concerned about the ultimate usefulness of the privacy framework that Solove has developed. To phrase it colloquially, in this author\u27s view, the Solove taxonomy of privacy suffers from too much doctrine, and not enough dead bodies. It frames privacy harms in dry, analytical terms that fail to sufficiently identify and animate the compelling ways that privacy violations can negatively impact the lives of living, breathing human beings beyond simply provoking feelings of unease
Behavioral Genetics Research and Criminal DNA Databases
Kaye discusses DNA databanks and the potential use of such databanks for behavioral genetics research. He addresses the concern that DNA databanks serve as a limitless repository for future research and that the samples used in the databanks could be used for research into a crime gene
Library application of Deep Web and Dark Web technologies
The Deep Web and Dark Web are legitimate tools for use in the field of information science, adding to the discussion of patron privacy. The American Library Association policies on privacy and confidentiality combined with the advancement of internet technology necessitate that library professionals become fluent in Dark Web usability in libraries
Privacy and Confidentiality in an e-Commerce World: Data Mining, Data Warehousing, Matching and Disclosure Limitation
The growing expanse of e-commerce and the widespread availability of online
databases raise many fears regarding loss of privacy and many statistical
challenges. Even with encryption and other nominal forms of protection for
individual databases, we still need to protect against the violation of privacy
through linkages across multiple databases. These issues parallel those that
have arisen and received some attention in the context of homeland security.
Following the events of September 11, 2001, there has been heightened attention
in the United States and elsewhere to the use of multiple government and
private databases for the identification of possible perpetrators of future
attacks, as well as an unprecedented expansion of federal government data
mining activities, many involving databases containing personal information. We
present an overview of some proposals that have surfaced for the search of
multiple databases which supposedly do not compromise possible pledges of
confidentiality to the individuals whose data are included. We also explore
their link to the related literature on privacy-preserving data mining. In
particular, we focus on the matching problem across databases and the concept
of ``selective revelation'' and their confidentiality implications.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000240 in the
Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Examined Lives: Informational Privacy and the Subject as Object
In the United States, proposals for informational privacy have proved enormously controversial. On a political level, such proposals threaten powerful data processing interests. On a theoretical level, data processors and other data privacy opponents argue that imposing restrictions on the collection, use, and exchange of personal data would ignore established understandings of property, limit individual freedom of choice, violate principles of rational information use, and infringe data processors\u27 freedom of speech. In this article, Professor Julie Cohen explores these theoretical challenges to informational privacy protection. She concludes that categorical arguments from property, choice, truth, and speech lack weight, and mask fundamentally political choices about the allocation of power over information, cost, and opportunity. Each debate, although couched in a rhetoric of individual liberty, effectively reduces individuals to objects of choices and trades made by others. Professor Cohen argues, instead, that the debate about data privacy protection should be grounded in an appreciation of the conditions necessary for individuals to develop and exercise autonomy in fact, and that meaningful autonomy requires a degree of freedom from monitoring, scrutiny, and categorization by others. The article concludes by calling for the design of both legal and technological tools for strong data privacy protection
Following the Mobile Student: Can We Develop the Capacity for a Comprehensive Database to Assess Student Progression?
Presents a study of state-level databases on postsecondary student retention and completion rates and the feasibility of tracking students across state lines. Outlines challenges and recommendations, including establishing a common reporting standard
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