Date: Tue, 10 Aug 93 16:37:46 EST
Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler <comp-privacy-request@PICA.ARMY.MIL>
From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator <comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL>
To: Comp-privacy@PICA.ARMY.MIL
Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V3#012
Computer Privacy Digest Tue, 10 Aug 93 Volume 3 : Issue: 012
Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears
First Person broadcast on privacy
Re: First Person broadcast on privacy
Re: Disparate policies (was "Re: First Person broadcast on privacy")
Digital Cellular - was Re: First Person broadcast on privacy
re: ELECTRONIC MATCHMAKER
Re: Email Policy
Give America Online a break...
Social Security numbers
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Aug 1993 01:00:46 -0700
From: henry mensch <hcm@netcom.com>
Subject: First Person broadcast on privacy
>From: "Wm. L. Ranck" <ranck@joesbar.cc.vt.edu>
>John Higdon (john@zygot.ati.com) wrote:
>: For me, a pager is freedom. The alternative would be to be constantly
>: forwarding my phone to locations all over town or to my cellular phone.
>: I could forget social activities that would take me out of the reach of
>: telephones such as concerts and picnics. You see, I am on twenty-four
>: hour call. If any one of number of radio stations were to go off the
>
>Like I said, some people have a business use for pagers and faxes. But,
>the original post was about someone who had been laid off from his job
>and "had to scramble" to keep access to pager, fax, and e-mail. He
>didn't need them for his job anymore he just thought he needed them for
>his personal communications. And, I think that's absurd.
how nice for you. i use my home fax more than i ever use my office fax; i
have friends all around the world, and fax is the easiest and fastest way to
get stuff to them; all i do is fire up microsoft word, write up a fax cover
page (and attach the appropriate other bits, if necessary), and print to the
fax. no one-week delays for "air mail" to europe or australia, and no
outrageous charges for overnight services that don't quite work well
overseas. ditto for paging and cell phone service: my pager keeps me from
being a slave to my home phone. my friends can find me when they want to
arrange a dinner expedition.
what's so absurd about this?
> .... If you didn't need your pager for
>your on call status would you still feel a need to carry it around?
absolutely.
# henry mensch / <hcm@netcom.com> / pob 14592; sf, ca 94114-0592; usa
# "on the internet, nobody knows you're a bear." --tovah hollander
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 93 22:41:05 GMT
Subject: Re: First Person broadcast on privacy
Organization: Electronic Birdwatching Society
From: Bill Stewart <wcs@anchor.att.com>
In article <comp-privacy3.8.1@pica.army.mil> Dorothy Klein <dak@gandalf.rutgers.edu> writes:
The sticking point is that the person [...]
had specifically asked about security, had been told of
COURSE nobody could or would read e-mail, and to go ahead and tell
everyone they could use the e-mail and feel secure. She later tripped
over a pile of e-mail printouts, with one of hers on the top, in her
boss's office, and was told it was none of her business -- shortly
before Epson fired her. Epson fired her on 15 minutes' notice, and
someone saying they were at Epson called the local 911 number while she
was cleaning out her desk saying that she was violent, irrational, and
had a gun (and gave her full name) --
Hmmm - that's rather a different case from the generic problem.
If they told her they had a pro-privacy policy, and in fact had an
anti-privacy policy, that's rather fraudulent; telling the police she
was violent, irrational, and armed is outright slander, and probably
endangering her, given police's normal response to armed, violent,
irrational people (unless, of course, she *was* armed and violent,
which probably would have been mentioned on the tube if true.)
--
# Pray for peace; Bill
# Bill Stewart 1-908-949-0705 wcs@anchor.att.com AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ
# White House Comment Line 1-202-456-1111 fax 1-202-456-2461
# ROT-13 public key available upon request
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 93 22:30:33 GMT
Subject: Re: Disparate policies (was "Re: First Person broadcast on privacy")
Organization: Electronic Birdwatching Society
From: Bill Stewart <wcs@anchor.att.com>
In article <comp-privacy3.9.2@pica.army.mil> Todd Jonz <Todd.Jonz@corp.sun.com> writes:
In my experience it's very likely that companies don't really have
formal, published policies on a lot of these issues.
I think that's getting close to the guts of the problem.
How much privacy you have at work, like how much money you make,
or whether your office has real walls or just partitions,
or whether they trust your judgement in what drugs to take on weekends,
is a negotiable issue. If you haven't negotiated it,
either explicitly or by not refusing to accept a published policy,
then you and your employer are going on matters of implied contracts,
and you may have different expectations that you've got to work out somehow.
Personally, I'd prefer to work at an employer that respects my privacy,
and treats me like a professional, though I can understand occasional cases
where that doesn't apply (handling highly classified information).
But if there isn't a pre-arranged agreement, in general I don't think
either side has a strong position for taking it to court.
Eavesdropping on employees is unprofessional scumminess, like drug
testing is, but if everybody sued everyone they though was
unprofessional or scummy, we'd never get *anything* done :-)
--
# Pray for peace; Bill
# Bill Stewart 1-908-949-0705 wcs@anchor.att.com AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ
# White House Comment Line 1-202-456-1111 fax 1-202-456-2461
# ROT-13 public key available upon request
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Aug 93 23:00:52 GMT
From: Bill Stewart <wcs@anchor.att.com>
Subject: Digital Cellular - was Re: First Person broadcast on privacy
Organization: The Big Phone Company
In article <comp-privacy3.9.4@pica.army.mil> Christopher Zguris <0004854540@mcimail.com> writes:
As far as encryption, I didn't realize digital cellular necessarily meant
encryption (I may very well be dead wrong here, I'm not that familiar with
digital cellular)- I thought it simply meant digitizing the audio using
simple analog-to-digital techniques. The theory being your average joe with
his receiver would only hear gibberish.
Digital cellular doesn't inherently require encryption - but privacy
is a real concern in the cellular market, and digitized voice can
easily be encrypted at minimal cost, so the digital cellular providers
want to provide it; the main real delay is because the government
objects to the public using strong encryption, and makes export of it illegal.
Simple digitization provides some privacy, at least until digital
transmitters become sufficiently widespread that digital receivers do also;
it's not hard to convince an analog cellular phone to listen to other calls,
and it wouldn't be hard for simple digital cellular phones either.
Spread-spectrum techniques substantially increase privacy, though
their real value is reducing interference and power requirements,
but it's still eavesdroppable. Spread-spectrum cordless phones are
just coming out on the market, though I'm not sure I'd be willing to
give out my credit card number on one of them...
--
# Pray for peace; Bill
# Bill Stewart 1-908-949-0705 wcs@anchor.att.com AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ
# White House Comment Line 1-202-456-1111 fax 1-202-456-2461
# ROT-13 public key available upon request
------------------------------
From: Paul Gribble <gribble@hip.atr.co.jp>
Subject: re: ELECTRONIC MATCHMAKER
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 00:29:51 GMT
Organization: ATR Human Information Processing Laboratory
someone wrote: ...free? there must be a catch...
think about it -
you fill out and send in this questionnaire, which
involves answering many many many detailed questions about
qualities about you, and qualities you like in others...
plus things like income, job description,
living arrangements, relationship history, etc...
basically it's a shit-load of demographic information...
just think about how much demographic information about
the whole WORLD that they could gather if only a handful
of people at every internet site replied to their
questionnaire!
Now I have no idea if they are using all this
information for anything other than what they
claim they are using it for... I'm just making
the point that they _have_ this information
when you fill out the questionnaire.
------------------------------
From: Bernie Cosell <cosell@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Email Policy
Reply-To: cosell@world.std.com
Organization: Fantasy Farm Fibers
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 03:58:35 GMT
In article <comp-privacy3.11.1@pica.army.mil>, "Glenn S. Tenney" writes:
} On 03 Aug 93 17:57:14 EDT William Hugh Murray <75126.1722@compuserve.com> said:
}
} > 7. Policy should always reserve some right for management to
} > look at the contents of the communications in order to
} > preserve necessary options and to protect management when
} > some manager or management surrogate acts at or beyond the
} > limits of his authority.
}
} and many other things relating to consistent rules for all forms of
} communications...
}
} The last time I spoke with the USPS about mail addressed to people at a
} business address I was told that the rules were very clear: If a letter is
} addressed to someone at a company, it belongs to the receiving company.
} However, if a letter indicates that it is 'personal', then it belongs to
} the person to whom it is addressed rather than to to the company.
Ah, good... I've been asking about this and I'm glad to see that the USPS
policy is the reasonable one to expect.
I assume, of course, the an employer who chooses *NOT* provide a private,
personal, delivery channel can refuse mail marked "personal", yes?
} I should think that a similar exception must apply for other forms of
} communications. If the subject line of an email message says 'personal',
} then the company is on notice that it is NOT work related and they should
} not be looking at it.
And, similarly here: I assume that it would be OK for the employer to
have their SMTP mail daemon refuse to deliver mail so-marked.
} ... The company might wish to have a policy against
} non-business communications, but that is impossible to enforce for the
} receipt of unsolicited communications.
Not true at all. As you've just said: the *presumption* is that it is
business unless clearly marked otherwise. So unsolicited or not: if
it arrives at the company's 'portal', be it electronic or mail-room,
if it is not "marked" it is presumed to be business and the employer
can do with it as they wish; if it _is_ "marked", then it can simply
be refused. I don't see either the ambiguity or the difficulty in a policy
like this...
/Bernie\
--
Bernie Cosell cosell@world.std.com
Fantasy Farm Fibers, Pearisburg, VA (703) 921-2358
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1993 08:35:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Dave Ptasnik <davep@cac.washington.edu>
Subject: Give America Online a break...
If America Online wants to be the Disney channel of dial up services,
let them. I imagine that parents are glad that their kids have a means
of expressing themselves through writing. Not only will it improve
typing skills, but frequent bad manners, spelling, or grammer is
probably flamed, improving those areas as well. At the same time it is
probably a relief that younger viewers have a (relatively) safe place
to exercise their talents, free of adult material for which there are
plenty of other forums.
There is plenty of space in the marketplace for all sorts of vendors. If
you don't like their policies, go to some other service, there are plenty
of them around. Like they say, just change the channel.
All of the above is nothing more than the personal opinion of -
Dave Ptasnik davep@u.washington.edu
------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk,comp.privacy,comp.society.privacy
From: sbloch@ms.uky.edu (Stephen Bloch)
Subject: Social Security numbers
Organization: University Of Kentucky, Dept. of Math Sciences
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 1993 01:04:12 GMT
This may be an FAQ on at least one of these groups, but I've been
wondering...
Paperwork from U.S. Federal and State agencies often has a notice
explaining on what grounds they're asking for your social security
number. I've heard that when the Social Security Act was first passed
in the 1930's Congress was worried enough about privacy to attach a
rider to the effect that "the social security number may not be
required as identification except for tax purposes" or something like
that, and that any organization that DID choose to use it for
identification not related to taxes was required to offer alternate
identification numbers upon demand. Can somebody who KNOWS answer the
following questions:
1) Who is allowed to demand my Social Security number, and for what
purposes? I'm curious about both governmental and non-governmental
organizations.
2) Is there any penalty for violation of this law, i.e. for
withholding benefits, memberships, etc. on sole grounds of refusal
to give a Social Security number?
3) Is there a government publication stating this?
Thank you,
--
Stephen Bloch
sbloch@s.ms.uky.edu
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V3 #012
******************************