Date: Mon, 02 Jan 95 07:51:14 EST
Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler <owner-comp-privacy@uwm.edu>
From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator <comp-privacy@uwm.edu>
To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu
Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V6#001
Computer Privacy Digest Mon, 02 Jan 95 Volume 6 : Issue: 001
Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine
Social Security and the Green Card
Credit Reporting
Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Cordless Phone Privacy
Re: Must I Always Carry I.D?
Re: School Monitoring
Re: School Monitoring
Info on CPD [new]
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From: Jannick Johnsson <wiking@neosoft.com>
Date: 31 Dec 1994 15:56:05 GMT
Subject: Social Security and the Green Card
Organization: NeoSoft Internet Services +1 713 684 5969
I am an legal immigrant with 20 years in USA (Texas) and I have paid
the full amount in SS every year for the last 20 years. Where can I
find information what will happen to this money and the money my
employer has paid in my SS acount. Is this money lost if I return to my
home country (Denmark) or is it paid to me when I leave. Can I get my
SS paid to me if I take residence in Denmark. I have tried to ask the
SS office in Houston they told me Uncle Sam will get the money when I
leave, I do not think this is right!!! I appriciate any answer.
--
Jannick Johnsson
EMAIL wiking@neosoft.com
------------------------------
From: mea@intgp1.att.com (Mark E Anderson +1 708 979 4716)
Date: 01 Jan 95 01:28:00 GMT
Subject: Credit Reporting
Robert Ellis Smith <0005101719@mcimail.com> wrote: Just before the
holiday there were some inquiries about credit reports. Here are
some answers: The practice of doing a credit check of everybody on
a list before sending a mailing is legal so long as everybody who
makes the cut gets a bona fide extensio n of credit. It's called
prescreening.
I was under the imression that any company running a credit check on
you required your signature. This is true with my credit report. A
couple of years ago and a couple of days before I was about to close on
my current residence, the loan company refused to issue the loan
because they finally found three recent hits on my credit report. A
month earlier, I had opened a bank account in return for a "free"
cellular phone. The bank hit me twice by talking me into overdraft
protection and a free credit card. The cellular company hit me once
upon subscription. This mess caused my closing to be delayed by a
month incurring a lot of extra lawyer fees.
I receive the so called pre-approved credit cards and credit in the
mail about once a week and rip them up without bothering to open the
envelope. None of these outfits have touched my credit report from
what I've seen.
--
Mark Anderson
mea@intgp1.att.com
------------------------------
From: jeffn@meaddata.com (Jeff Nye)
Date: 01 Jan 1995 17:57:04 GMT
Subject: Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Cordless Phone Privacy
Organization: LEXIS-NEXIS, a division of Reed-Elsevier
The Ohio Supreme Court, in a recent 7-0 decision to uphold the 1991
conviction of Ivo Bidinost Jr. for child-rape, said that the recordings
of cordless telephone conversations used in the 1991 case are illegal.
According to the Dayton Daily News of 01 Jan 95 the Court went further
to say that privacy is a right no matter the technology.
------------------------------
From: paddles@zeta.org.au (Tim Anderson)
Date: 02 Jan 1995 14:50:50 +1100
Subject: Re: Must I Always Carry I.D?
Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney, +61-2-837-1183 V.32bis
On 11 Nov 1994, amy young-leith wrote: If you are pulled over and
you HAVE a valid drivers license issued to you, but you don't have
it WITH you (it's at home on the table or in your purse slung on
the chair or...), is THAT a crime? Will you be charged with
something? Will you have any chance to obtain your license to
avoid this charge if there is one?
"David C. Frier" <duvie@digex.com> writes: I have been in traffic
court and seen a succession of cases dismissed by the judge after
the defendants, all of whom had been charged with "driving without
a license," produced the licenses that had been at home on the
table or in the other pants or whatever.
I think it al depends on the laws in your state and/or country. In my
state (New South Wales, Australia) it is an offence to drive without
having your license with you; the offence carries an on-the-spot fine.
However in at least one adjacent state the law says you have 24 hours
to produce a license to anyone who has a right to see it. Presumably
the same sorts of variations will be evident in the United States and
other countries with different states.
--
Tim Anderson | paddles@kralizec.zeta.org.au | Sydney, Australia +1100 | Thing!
For net.reasons I can't name the statutory broadcaster I program computers for
Single Christian male seeks witty comment to share sig block. Apply by email.
------------------------------
From: gmcgath@condes.MV.COM (Gary McGath)
Date: 31 Dec 1994 17:42:36 GMT
Subject: Re: School Monitoring
Organization: Conceptual Design
ranck@earn.net (Bill Ranck) wrote: Never heard of the Postal
Inspectors? They certainly can inspect mail. There just isn't a
notice on the mailboxes.
Two people in this thread have made similar claims (though the other
one said it applies only to parcels). Does anyone have some real
information on this? I'm reasonably sure it's illegal for postal
inspectors to open first class mail without a warrant. I don't know
what the situation is for parcels.
--
Gary McGath
gmcgath@condes.mv.com
PGP Signature: 3E B3 62 C8 F8 9E E9 3A 67 E7 71 99 71 BD FA 29
------------------------------
From: Wayne Frost <75000.1251@compuserve.com>
Date: 30 Dec 94 17:13:26 EST
Subject: Re: School Monitoring
Jim C (collins@nova.umd.edu) wrote: "Recently, the logon banner at
my school/internet provider has had an unsettling addition to it:
'All usage of this system is monitored for security purposes, and
by signing on to the system you are implicitly consenting to th is
monitoring.' Yipes! What are the implications of this? Is this even
legal? I don't expect to pick up the phone and hear 'By using this
service you are implicityly consenting to being monitored for
security purposes..."
Why not? It is legal. I am employed in the banking industry, in the
area that I work in we accept telephone calls from our customers to
initiate financial transactions. When a customer wants to do business
with us a contract is executed which includes a clause in which the
customer agrees that we will record all telephone conversations.
Customers call in to an automated call distribution system, which has
an automatic announcement message telling the customers that they will
be recorded, and then when one of our human operators gets the customer
call, the operator's script includes notice that the call is being
recorded. We also introduce a beep tone on our telephone lines that
are recorded. To my knowledge no customer has ever refused to sign the
contract because of the monitoring clause.
The investment in monitoring and recording equipment (which is
substantial, in my area we have the capability of recording more than
100 telephone conversations concurrently) is well worth the expense and
our efforts at disclosure. We have used the recordings to correct
inappropriate behavior by our staff or by our customers'
representatives who call us (by playing or delivering cassettes of
their conversations to their management), and to resolve responsibility
when errors have been made in financial transactions (this is very
important because of the potential financial penalties associated with
delayed or misdirected transactions, if the bank made the error, the
bank eats the penalty, if the customer made the error, the bank does
not pay the penalty).
Playing back a recording to one of our staff members when they have
either made an error in the transaction, or have not comported
themselves according to our standards, is a very powerful behavior
modification tool. You can't dispute the sound of your own voice.
This has also worked very well when the problem has been on the
customer's side.
We have not had to take any recordings to court yet, but we would
anticipate that with all of our disclosures, any recordings we did want
to introduce in court would be admissable. In our experience the only
time that a customer has objected to the recording activity was when
the customer was an attorney. This Legal Eagle, as some lawyers seem
to enjoy doing, was attempting to intimidate one of our representatives
when he called us on the phone and heard the beep tone, however our
response to any objections, or implied threats from callers lilke this
"gentleman" (please don't get me wrong here, I am not pointing the
finger at all attorneys, just the few that seem to get off on abusing
the general public with their status as attorneys), are dealt with very
simply. If you object to being recorded by us, then you have the
option of not talking to us, but we are not going to talk to you
without recording the conversation.
In my opinion businesses have a legitemate right to monitor the
activities of their staff or agents when those people are supposed to
be acting in their official, business activities. We do not embark on
"fishing expeditions" with this equipment, we are not sitting in a room
hour after hour, day after day, listing to telephone conversations.
But we do play back conversations when an issue has been brought to our
attention, either as a complaint or service issue that has been opened
by a customer or if we have independent evidence that we may have a
staff behavior problem. We also do occasionally perform random
monitoring of calls, and this is part of our overall quality control
problem, we do not, however, use these tools for "fishing
expeditions".
Working in a bank, in a secured enviroment, we are also subject to
other monitoring, we use access control cards to enter an leave our
building and various internal areas. We are under video surveilance
throughout our building and the grounds around its perimeter. We are
subject to the various system and data security controls through our
access to mainframe, LAN's and stand-alone PC systems. We use both
voice mail and electronic mail that may be subject to monitoring.
There are computer programs used by our internal auditors to monitor
our employee checking accounts and report any extraordinary activity.
So there is potentially a heck of a lot of opportunity to monitor just
about anything we do here, but my sense is that it is not abused. I do
not feel violated in any way. When the rent-a-cop down in the security
control room has to keep an eye on 60 video monitors, do you think he
really sees anything?
Now if I ever thought that somebody had put together an application
system that would gather all of the data available from all of the
above sources, collate it and permit uncontrolled inquiries, I would
probably have a problem with that.
As an aside, I hear a report on one of the news radio stations today
that some woman, in Atlanta, I believe, received a police scanner from
her husband for Christmas. So she began listing to it, and lo and
behold she apparently picked up a conversation between a neighbor woman
and her lover. (I am guessing that maybe they were in a phone
conversation in which one of the parties must have been using a
cordless phone.) They were plotting to kill the woman's husband and
make it look like a burglary. Needless to say they have been arrested
and charged with attempted murder.
Anyone want to bet that some attorney for the defense is going to claim
unauthorized recording of a telephone conversation. It woud be
interesting to see what the laws say about eavsdropping on cordless
telephone conversations. I am willing to bet that the court would
uphold any evidence gathered this way in this case, in that by virtue
of the fact that you are voluntarilly using a cordless telephone, you
are implying that you know and do not object to the fact that someone
else might be listening in.
I think all of this boils down to the simple fact that in order to
maintain our privacy, we all have to agree to trust that none of us
will abuse the tools or information that come before us.
--
Wayne Frost
Monterey Park, CA
75000.1251@compuserve.com
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 29 Dec 1994 10:50:22 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Info on CPD [new]
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest
Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu
Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu
| Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu
levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
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End of Computer Privacy Digest V6 #001
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