Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 16:24:47 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#048
Computer Privacy Digest Sat, 25 Sep 93 Volume 3 : Issue: 048
Today's Topics: Moderator: Dennis G. Rears
Computer Privacy Digest (comp.society.privacy) Posting Guide
Re: Computer Privacy Digest V3#040
Re: National Health Card
Re: Health card
Re: Health Card
800 numbers
Re: SSNs published in the newspaper
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the
effect of technology on privacy. The digest is moderated and
gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy
(Moderated). Submissions should be sent to
comp-privacy@pica.army.mil and administrative requests to
comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil.
Back issues are available via anonymous ftp on ftp.pica.army.mil
[129.139.160.133].
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 16:19:49 EDT
From: Computer Privacy List Moderator <comp-privacy@Pica.Army.Mil>
Subject: Computer Privacy Digest (comp.society.privacy) Posting Guide
Policy on Posting to the Computer Privacy Digest.
Revision History:
Revision 1.0 27 May 1992
Revision 1.1 24 April 1993
Introduction:
The Computer Privacy Digest is an electronic digest dedicated to the
discussion of how technology affects privacy. The digest is burst into
separate articles and fed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy.
The newsgroup and digest are different forms of the same forum.
Discussions should be centered around the following topics:
o Technology - What devices are out there now and are on the
drawing boards that will enhance or take away privacy from
individuals and entities.
o Ramifications - What are the ramifications are current and new
technology.
o Public Policy - What should public policy be in regulating,
not regulating, and/or using the technology. Privacy includes the
right of the individual/entitity to privacy against other
individuals, entities, businesses, and the various forms of
government.
o Education - This kind of goes with ramification. One of the
functions of this forum should be to educate people on how
current technology affect their privacy. This can range from
corporate data bases to credit card usage.
1. Submissions:
a. All submissions should be emailed to comp-privacy@pica.army.mil or
posted to the comp.society.privacy newsgroup. Only submissions that
are relavant to the charter of the forum will be published. Please
keep text to under 76 characters per line. Personal attacks, excess
flamage, or libelous postings will not be published.
b. Submissions should not be sent to comp-privacy-request@pica.army.mil.
This address is for drop/add requests, administrative changes, and
confidential requests to the moderator. Those submissions sent to
that address will only be published is explicit permission is granted
to publish by the poster.
c. Anonymous submissions are generally not accepted. Under certain
conditions an exception will be made at the Moderator's discretion.
2. Copyright Issues
a. It is assumed that the copyright on material submitted to the CPD
will remain with the author. In the case where the author is the
submitter, it is assumed that the author explicitely grants (by the act
of submitting the material) permission for the material to be published
in the CPD, to be posted to the USENET group comp.society.privacy, and
to any archiving of either medium.
b. When the submitter is not the owner of the copyright, only those
submissions which carry a notice from the submitter that the permission
of the copyright holder has been obtained will be accepted. This does
not apply to limited inclusions of copyrighted material that meet the
fair use criteria.
3. Signal to Noise Ratio:
It is my desire to keep a high signal to noise ratio. As a result
a particular posting may not be published or a subject thread might
be terminated when postings start to fail to shed new insight into
the subject. I welcome submissions on new topics and encourage them.
The quality of the digest is up the readers and posters.
4. Long Articles
Articles between 10 - 50Kbytes will be split into chunks
not longer than 20K and be placed in separate digests. Articles
longer than 50K will be announced and be made available via FTP.
For people without ftp access I will mail copies upon request.
5. Computer Privacy Digest Archives
Back Issues of the Computer Privacy Digest well as back issues of the
old Telecom Privacy digest are available via anonymous ftp from
ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. Ftp in as username=anonymous
and password=your_email_address. Cd into the pub/privacy
directory. The following files/directories are located there:
READ_ME
CPD Directory containing issues of the CPD
telecom-priv Directory containing things relating to
Dennis G. Rears
Moderator, The Computer Privacy Digest
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Computer Privacy Digest V3#040
From: "Roy M. Silvernail" <roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org>
Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1993 17:51:21 CST
Organization: The Villa CyberSpace, executive headquarters
In comp.society.privacy, bryon@boa.meaddata.com writes:
> Is the U.S. Government really going to become this irrational in its
> phobia that the common citizen may actually obtain true privacy in
> their communications? What has happened to our government over the
> last 200 years?
It hasn't taken 200 years for the situation to degrade this far. My own
feeling is that the big decline began in the early part of this century.
Between the rabid nationalism fostered by World War I and the vast
government expansion which combatted the Great Depression, our governing
entities have steadily grown their own agenda.
> We once believed that what the private citizen did was
> his own business until there was physical evidence that they were
> harming another's Constitutional rights. Now, you believe that you
> have the right to "take a preventative stance toward crime and
> corruption...". Sounds good, but where does that lead us? To invading
> ALL areas of our citizens lives that were once deemed private, in the
> hope that you may find a potential infraction?!?
That about sums it up, I think. Those who have read Alvin Toffler's
{The Third Wave} may well recognize the power struggle we are witnessing
as the death rattle of the Second Wave power structure. The very basis
of civilization is undergoing a tremendous change. It's every bit as
significant (and more so) as the transition from agriculture to
industry. Those in power have grown accustomed to being in power, and
the coming wave threatens their very existance. So their knees are
jerking, and We The People are getting kicked.
> Our forefathers are doing backflips.
>
> So would I if I wasn't so scared....
Sadly, it appears that the worst of the situation is yet to come.
--
Roy M. Silvernail [ ] roy@sendai.cybrspc.mn.org
cat /usr/philosophy/survival | PGP 2.3a public key
#! /usr/local/bin/perl -p | available upon request
next unless /$clue/; | (send yours)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1993 05:11:08 -0400 (EST)
From: ouellett <ouellett@indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: National Health Card
President Clinton's new health care proposals includes the introduction
of a national card which I guess would allow anyones complete medical
history to be accessed ( at like all other governement records, keyed on
the SS number).
I would like to see some additional comment on this topic.
Also recently my employer changed my health insurer from a decent
Blue Cross insurer to a rather questionable out of state company.
Every claim form contains the following authoriztion which must be signed
before any claim is prossed:
Authorization to Obtain Informattion
I authorize any physician, medical professional,hospital, clinic,
medical care institution, insurance company or reinsuring company,
medical or hospital service or prepaid health plan, employer or group
policyholder, contractholder, or benefit plan administratorto provide
the Company and any benefit plan administators, CONSUMER REPORTING
AGENCY (emphasis mine) attorneys and independent claim administrators
acting on the company's behalf, with information concerning medical
care, advice, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis, or supplies relating to
the patent, including information relating to mental illness, and any
employment-related information regarding the patent, ... I understand
that this agreement shall be valid for the life of the policy . I
agree that a photostatic copy of this authoriztion is as valid as the
original.
Any comments? Are such invasive agreements standard to the industry.
What does a consumer reporting agency have to do with my medical claims?
Would you feel conformtable if such information could be obtained with
only your SS# perhaps.
Denis Ouellette
ouellett@ucs.indiana.edu
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 24 Sep 93 21:59:03 PDT
From: Kelly Bert Manning <ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Subject: Re: Health card
Reply-To: ua602@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
In a previous article, slenk@hal.emba.uvm.edu (Carl A Slenk) says:
>On the news last night H. Clinton mentioned a " National
>Health Security Card". Anyone have any details?
>
It looked like a standard bank credit/ATM/debit card with a mag stripe.
Here in Canada the universal health plans are administered by each province,
but they have to meet federal standards to get federal funding. The reduction
in funding by the feds had weakened it's ability to set standards.
Originally provinces wanted to use SIN as the identifier. This is our
version of SSN. Some provinces, such as BC, were very reasonable about
issuing their own pseudo SIN with a leading 0 digit(same mod 10 check
digit as a real SIN) if people didn't have one or wouldn't give one.
Prince Edward Island has been very dogmatic about this. Infants must be
assigned a real federal SIN at birth or they are not covered.
Both Ontario and BC have gone to issuing their own numbers and cards. The
numbers have nothing to do with SINs.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 08:42:40 EDT
From: Dave Niebuhr <dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov>
Subject: Re: Health Card
In Computer Privacy Digest V3 #047 "Winston B. Edmond"
<wbe@northshore.ecosoft.com> writes:
>Carl A Slenk <slenk@hal.emba.uvm.edu> writes:
> On the news last night H. Clinton mentioned a " National
> Health Security Card". Anyone have any details?
>
>It'd be nice if its use as a national unique identifier were as least as
>protected from abuse as the SSN.
> -WBE
>
According to {Newsday}, a Long Island newspaper, some legislators
were working to see that the proposed Health Card did not turn out
the way the SSN did. They would include strict limitations on its
disclosure to certain people in the health professions.
Dave
Dave Niebuhr Internet: dwn@dwn.ccd.bnl.gov (preferred)
niebuhr@bnl.gov / Bitnet: niebuhr@bnl
Senior Technical Specialist, Scientific Computing Facility
Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, NY 11973 (516)-282-3093
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 03:57:49 CDT
From: Denis <OUELLETT@ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: 800 numbers
Is there any type of criss-cross directory or its electronic equivlent
availible for finding the owner of a 800 number? I would like to find
the "real" owner of a telemarketing firm offering vacation "prizes" who
ripped off my not so bright sister.
Denis Ouellette
OUELLETT@ucs.indiana.edu
------------------------------
From: Carl Oppedahl <oppedahl@panix.com>
Newsgroups: comp.society.privacy
Subject: Re: SSNs published in the newspaper
Date: 25 Sep 1993 10:27:20 -0400
Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and Unix, NYC
In <comp-privacy3.47.1@pica.army.mil> Janet Prichard <prichard@cs.uri.edu> writes:
>Here in the state of Rhode Island we have had court documents for
>our governor and chief justice of the RI supreme court published in one
>of the major newspapers of the state (the governor was charged with
>shooting some raccoons, the chief justice with misappropriation of funds).
>Not only did the documents disclose name, address, charges, etc., but
>their SSNs as well!
>Do they have any legal recourse? I know this probably gets back into
>the issue of whether or not the police need your SSN...
Rhode Island is a bit of a privacy backwater so far as I can tell, but
so are a lot of other states.
A lawyer who wants to sit for the Rhode Island bar exam, and be admitted
to practice, has to be fingerprinted. And you you think they keep that
fingerprint to themselves, those bar exam people? I doubt it. I expect
they hand it over to the authorities to add to some humongous database.
Oh, and need I say it? They also demand your SSN. Do they keep it
secret? I doubt it.
In Iowa, if you want to find out someone's SSN (and if they are so
privacy-careless that they have gotten a drivers license) you just drop
by the department of motor vehicles. Their SSN will be on the public
records there.
--
Carl Oppedahl AA2KW (patent lawyer)
1992 Commerce Street #309
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-4412
voice 212-777-1330
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 1993 11:41:45 -0700
From: News User <news@jimi.cs.unlv.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.privacy,misc.legal,alt.society.civil-liberty,comp.society.privacy
From: robert@unlv.edu (Robert Cray)
Subject: Re: SSNs over Police Radio
Organization: University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Date: Sat, 25 Sep 93 18:41:39 GMT
In article <comp-privacy3.45.2@pica.army.mil> Mark Malson <kgw2!markm@uunet.uu.net> writes:
>Anybody in Ohio had any experience with getting their SSN out of their
>DMV records?
Nevada has a scheme where you can have a drivers license number that is not
your SSN, however I later discovered that if you take the 1st ten digits of
this number, subtract 2,600,000,001, and divide by 2, voila! out comes the
SSN. The DMV acknowledges this scheme and says the number either has to be
the SSN or the SSN*2+2600000001 with the last 2 digits of the year of your
birth appended...
--robert
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V3 #048
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