Date: Fri, 04 Aug 95 13:21:46 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 V7#010
Computer Privacy Digest Fri, 04 Aug 95 Volume 7 : Issue: 010
Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine
Re: Phone Sales
Re: Caller ID Blockers
Re: Wisconsin Operator's License
Re: Wisconsin Operator's License
Re: CPD FTP & Email Services Termination
House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes and Cox/Wyden Amendment
Re: Defeating Signature Scans by Sears
Conferences/Events of Interest
Total Surveillance on the Highway
Info on CPD
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Privacy Rights Clearinghouse <prc@pwa.acusd.edu>
Date: 01 Aug 1995 17:17:15 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: Phone Sales
Below are some excerpts from our Fact Sheet #5, "Telemarketing: Whatever
Happened To A Quiet Evening At Home?". This fact sheet (and 17 others)
are available online at <gopher://pwa.acusd.edu/11/USDinfo/privacy>.
Brad Biddle, Legal Intern
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse <prc@acusd.edu>
CA HOTLINE: 1-800-773-7748
OUTSIDE CA: +1-619-298-3396
gopher://pwa.acusd.edu/11/USDinfo/privacy
ftp://ftp.acusd.edu/pub/privacy
Taken from Fact Sheet #5:
[...]
*Are there any laws about telemarketing?*
Yes, both state and federal laws regulate telephone solicitations.
1. *"Do not call" lists.* The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47
USC section 227) requires telemarketers to take you off their list if
you ask them to do so. They must maintain "do not call" lists of all
residences who do not want to be contacted. If you have received more
than one call by or on behalf of the same company in one year, after
you have told the company to place your name on the "do not call list",
you can:
a) File a suit in state court (usually small claims court is
recommended). You may recover up to $500 for each time the telemarketer
called you after you requested to be placed on the do not call list. In
addition, you may be awarded up to $1500 if the telemarketer willfully
or knowingly broke the law.
b) Request that the Attorney General in your state file a suit
against the telemarketer. If the Attorney General receives several
complaints against the same telemarketer, it may file suit on behalf of
the residents of the state.
c) File a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
and request that the FCC take enforcement action against the
telemarketer.
Nonprofit and tax-exempt organizations are not required to keep "do not
call" lists. (For more details about "do not call" procedures, see 47
CFR Part 64.1200.)
Privacy tip: If you want to take action against a company that
continues to call, send a certified letter, return receipt requested,
demanding to be placed on the "do not call" list. Keep a copy of the
letter and the return receipt as proof. Also, keep a log of all calls.
[...]
Federal Communications Commission
Informal Complaints and Public Inquiries Branch, Enforcement
Division
Common Carrier Bureau, Mail Stop 1600A2
Washington, D.C. 20554
[...]
*For more information*
The Center for the Study of Commercialism has a "stop the calls"
telemarketing kit which you may obtain by sending $3.00 to: 1875
Connecticut Ave., N.W., #300, Washington D.C. 20009. The kit contains
information, tips and forms to keep track of "do not call" requests.
For a $20 annual fee, Private Citizen, a nonprofit organization, will
list you in its "do not call" Private Citizen Directory which is
distributed twice a year to over 1,400 telemarketing firms. Call (800)
CUT-JUNK.
For information on telemarketing fraud, contact the National Fraud
Information Center at (800) 876-7060.
[...]
------------------------------
From: trisha.pena@nashville.com (Trisha Pena)
Date: 03 Aug 95 07:11:17
Subject: Re: Caller ID Blockers
Organization: The Nashville Exchange BBS 615-383-0727
Athena Consulting said: I am very new to this CALLER ID concept. I
just moved to LA from California where they do not allow the masses
to have CID. I have seen a device you can purchase from specialty
catalogs for like $40 that claims to stop your name and number from
being read. Does anyone know if these work or not? Thanks!
If you have an unpublished phone number, you can do the same thing by
pressing *67 before you dial a number. It hides your number for that
call only so you have to remember to do it everytime or add it as a
"pre" in an autodialer.
Trisha in Nashville.
... Trisha from Nashville http://www.nashville.com/member/trisha.html
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
------------------------------
From: "Dennis G. Rears" <drears@Pica.Army.Mil>
Date: 02 Aug 95 9:27:39 EDT
Subject: Re: Wisconsin Operator's License
Professor L. Levine <levine@cs.uwm.edu> writes: This week the
dropped the other shoe. From now on, if you get a parking ticket
or do not pay civil fines they will extract the money from your
Income Tax Refund. The SSN will be the link. This will mean
megabucks for the State and for the Cities involved.
This brings up a completely unrelated question to privacy ---> in this
current environment where federal and state tax refunds can be tapped
for everything from child support, fines, student loans, and for the
latest government whims why would anyone purposely get a refund?
I make it a point to owe every year. This way I have real proof I
filed (my canceled check) also if they disagree with anything on my
form they have to take the effort get the money from me as opposed to
subtracting it from my refund. We have heard how this year the IRS has
withheld refunds because SSN names (due to marriage/divorce) did not
match the SSA database.
--
dennis
http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/drears/drears.html
------------------------------
From: mikus@bga.com (Mikus Grinbergs)
Date: 02 Aug 1995 15:02:46 -0500
Subject: Re: Wisconsin Operator's License
Organization: Gone Walkabout
Professor L. Levine <levine@cs.uwm.edu> wrote: This week the
dropped the other shoe. From now on, if you get a parking ticket
or do not pay civil fines they will extract the money from your
Income Tax Refund. The SSN will be the link. This will mean
megabucks for the State and for the Cities involved.
I just hope they provide a problem-resolution method. What recourse do
I have if Wisconsin uses my SSN to extract money from my Income Tax
Refund? (I do not live in Wisconsin, nor have I given them my SSN.)
I remember the time I had registered a green Vega (compact) station
wagon in one state, and received notice from another state (not Wisc.)
that, my not having paid a parking ticket for a white Cadillac having
'my-license-plate-number-including-state', they were going to take
action against me. Luckily, the other state accepted my explanation
that my car did not match the complaint, and did not pursue me
further. (I figured my license plate # got in because of inaccurate
data entry.)
------------------------------
From: "Dennis G. Rears" <drears@Pica.Army.Mil>
Date: 02 Aug 95 16:38:50 EDT
Subject: Re: CPD FTP & Email Services Termination
[moderator: Dennis Rears was the originator and original moderator
of this newsgroup and list. He has held an archive for this group
and now has to abandon it. I will be keeping the archives
henceforth. See last posting of this newsletter.]
As of August 15, I will have to terminate the remaining vestiges of the
Computer Privacy Digest from pica.army.mil. This includes the ftp
archives at ftp.pica.army.mil. This consists mainly of the digests
that I worked on and a volume that Levine did. Len has copied over the
old telecom-priv digests. Those old-timers out there will remember
that the Computer Privacy Digest starting out as the Telecom Privacy
digest. The Telecom Privacy Digest was in existence for a couple of
years and then I expanded it into the Computer Privacy Digest and
gatewayed it to the comp.society.privacy USENET newsgroup.
The <comp-privacy,comp-privacy-request,comp-privacy-news>@pica.army.mil
email addresses that I kept will be disappearing too. Believe it or
not they are still being used on occassion. This is even though I
transferred moderator duties over to Len in December of 1993. I have
sent a separate message to the users of privacy-news. This list was
used for those people who did not have access to USENET but wanted the
digest an article at a time.
Len wanted to know what I was up to. I am still reading CPD even
though I haven't contributed much lately. I have been spending my free
time creating "The Running Page", a WWW page for running. It's at
http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/running.html. Check it out.
Keep it mind it is still under development. Also, check out my home
page at http://sunsite.unc.edu/drears/running/drears/drears.html. Take
care.
--
dennis
------------------------------
From: ACLUNATL@aol.com
Date: 04 Aug 1995 12:17:48 -0400
Subject: House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes and Cox/Wyden Amendment
ACLU Cyber-Liberties Alert:
House Adopts Exon-Like Speech Crimes,
Also Adopts Cox/Wyden Amendment
At 9:10 am today, the House of Representatives voted to adopt an
omnibus "Managers Amendment" to the telecommunications bill (HR 1555),
which included new Exon-like speech crimes that would censor the
Internet. At 11:58 am, the House of Representatives voted 420 to 4 to
adopt the Cox/Wyden amendment to the telco bill. The Cox/Wyden
amendment, however, was not designed to -- and does not -- affect the
Exon-like speech crimes provisions added to the telco bill by the
House.
Speech Crimes Provisions in Managers Amendment:
The Managers Amendment containing the new speech crimes provisions
also contained some forty other unrelated amendments. The Exon-like
provisions were not a focus of the debate, and it is likely that most
members cast their votes for reasons unrelated to these provisions.
The Managers Amendment adds an entirely new Exon-like provision to the
existing federal obscenity laws. The provision would make it a crime to
"intentionally communicate by computer ... to any person the communicator
believes has not attained the age of 18 years, any material that, in context,
depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary
community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." (18 U.S.C.
1465)
This provision, like the Exon amendment passed by the Senate, would
effectively reduce all online content to that which is suitable only
for children. It also raises the same questions about service provider
liability that were raised by the Exon amendment.
The Managers Amendment would also make it a crime to "receive"
prohibited material "by computer," thereby subjecting both Internet
users and service providers to new prosecutions (18 U.S.C. 1462).
Assuming that the House telco bill (HR 1555) is approved (which is
highly probable by 3 pm today), both the House and Senate versions of
the telco bill will include severe attacks on cyber-liberties.
Cox/Wyden Amendment:
The ACLU has supported the general approach of the Cox/Wyden amendment
because it prohibits FCC regulation of content on the Internet and
generally supports private sector initiatives, not government
censorship, on cyberspace. As the ACLU has said before, there are
several ambiguities and some real problems with the Cox/Wyden
amendment. The two sponsors have committed to working with us on
resolving the problems. (See previously posted ACLU Online Analysis of
the Cox/Wyden Bill.)
-----------------------------------------------------------
For the online community to take comfort in what is done in the final
telco bill in the conference committee, at a minimum the following must
occur:
1. The Senate's Exon/Coats amendment (the Communications Decency Act)
must be rejected -- that is, deleted from the bill, not merely modified
in some way.
2. The House's Exon-like speech crimes amendment must be rejected --
that is, deleted from the bill, not merely modified in some way.
3. The ambiguities and problems in the Cox/Wyden amendment must be
resolved and then the Cox/Wyden amendment as modified should be
included in the telco bill.
The ACLU urges all those who care about free speech and personal
privacy to focus their energized efforts on all three fronts of the
fight.
The ACLU will continue to fight all aspects of the cyber-censorship
battle, including the Exon-like speech crimes provisions just passed by
the House, the Exon/Coats amendment in the Senate, the Dole/Grassley
anti-computer pornography bill, the Grassley anti-electronic
racketeering bill, and the Feinstein anti-explosives information
amendment to the counter-terrorism bill.
------------------------------
From: mcohen@charming.nrtc.northrop.com (Martin Cohen)
Date: 02 Aug 1995 20:44:28 GMT
Subject: Re: Defeating Signature Scans by Sears
Organization: Northrop Grumman Automation Sciences Laboratory, Pico Rivera, CA
Paul Robinson <paul@TDR.COM> writes: Those of you who prefer not to
have your signature scanned by Sears or other such places now have
a method without requiring you make a scene or cause a problem.
When I got a battery at Sears and paid with my Discover card, I just
told the clerk that I did not want my signature digitized. She then
filled out another form with a copy. I signed it and kept one copy.
No hassle, no problems, even though she said that I was the first one
to request this.
--
Marty Cohen (mcohen@nrtc.northrop.com) - Not the guy in Philly
This is my opinion and is probably not Northrop Grumman's!
Use this material of your own free will
------------------------------
From: Susan Evoy <evoy@pcd.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 03 Aug 1995 13:53:40 -0700
Subject: Conferences/Events of Interest
CPSR Members and Friends,
If you are planning to attend one of these conferences, or another that
may be related to CPSR's work, please contact CPSR at cpsr@cpsr.org or
(415) 322-3778 for easy ways for you to be a presence for CPSR.
[moderator: this is an excerpted copy of that list to include only
privacy related issues]
CONFERENCE /EVENT SCHEDULE
Good Morning America interview with Beth Givens, Director - Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse, Aug. 4, 8 a.m.
The Future of the Internet: Privacy, Security, and Parental Control, San Jose
State University, San Jose, CA, Aug. 17th.
Contact: acward@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu 408 924-4523
Advanced Surveillance Technologies, Copenhagen, DENMARK, Sept. 4.
Contact: pi@privacy.org
http://cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/privacy_international/pi.html
17th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners,
Copenhagen, DENMARK, Sept. 6-8. Contact: 45 33 14 38 44 45 33 13 38 43 (fax)
InfoWarCon '95, Arlington, VA, Sept. 7-8. Contact: winn@infowar.com
Computer: Politisches Medium? Medium der Politik?, Bremen, GERMANY,
September 15-16.
Contact: res@informatik.uni-bremen.de49 421 218 3308 (fax)
International Cryptography Institute 1995: Global Challenges, Washington, DC
Sep. 21-22. Contact: denning@cs.georgetown.edu
800 301 MIND (US only) 202 962-9494 202 962-9495 (fax)
The Good, the Bad, and the Internet, A Conference on the Big Issues in
Information Technology, CPSR Annual Meeting, 750 South Halsted, Chicago Circle Center, University of Illinois - Chicago, IL, Oct. 7-8.
Plenary sessions on:
* State of the 'Net 1995: Commercialization, Access, Censorship, and more
* Which way for Privacy and Civil Liberties ?
* Technology and Jobs: New jobs ? No jobs? Rethinking work
* Local Initiatives in Information Access
* Elections 1996: Towards a Technology Platform
plus workshops, hands-on demos, and a virtual conference
Contact: http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/discussions/cpsr/
http://www.cpsr.org/home
cpsrannmtg@cpsr.org
Managing the Privacy Revolution, Washington, DC, Oct. 31-Nov. 1
Contact: 201 996-1154
Assoc. for Practical and Professional Ethics, St. Louis, MO, Feb. 29-March 2
Submissions deadline is Oct. 31, 1995.
Contact: appe@indiana.edu 812 855-6450 812 855-3315
Computers, Freedom, and Privacy, M.I.T., Cambridge, MA, March 27-30, 1996.
Proposal Submission deadline: 9/1/95.
Contact: web.mit.edu/cfp96 cfp96-info@mit.edu
Technological Assaults on Privacy, Rochester, NY, April 18-20, 1996.
Paper drafts by Feb. 1, 1996.
Contact: privacy@rit.edu 716 475-6643 716 475-7120 (fax)
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 04 Aug 1995 08:22:16 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Total Surveillance on the Highway
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Taken from RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 3 Aug 1995 Volume
17 : Issue 23 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED
SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy,
Peter G. Neumann, moderator
Date: 01 Aug 1995 17:51:20 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Total surveillance on the highway
A controversy is growing around the failure of "Intelligent
Transportation System" programs in the United States to exercise any
leadership in the adoption of technologies for privacy protection. As
deployment of these systems accelerates, some of the transportation
authorities have begun to recognize the advantages of anonymous toll
collection technologies. For example, if you don't have any
individually identifiable records then you won't have to respond to a
flood of subpoenas for them. Many, however, have not seen the point of
protecting privacy, and some have expressed an active hostility to
privacy concerns, claiming that only a few fanatics care so much about
privacy that they will decline to participate in surveillance- oriented
systems. That may in fact be true, for the same reason that only a few
fanatics refuse to use credit cards. But that does not change the
advantages to nearly everyone of using anonymous technologies wherever
they exist.
Let me report two developments, one bright and one dark. On the bright
side, at least one company is marketing anonymous systems for automatic
toll collection in the United States: AT/Comm Incorporated, America's
Cup Building, Little Harbor, Marblehead MA 01945; phone (617) 631-1721,
fax -9721. Their pitch is that decentralized systems reduce both
privacy invasions and the hassles associated with keeping sensitive
records on individual travel patterns. Another company has conducted
highway-speed trials of an automatic toll-collection mechanism based on
David Chaums digital cash technology: Amtech Systems Corporation, 17304
Preston Road, Building E-100, Dallas TX 75252; phone: (214) 733-6600,
fax -6699. Because of the total lack of leadership on this issue at
the national level, though, individuals need to do what they can to
encourage local transportation authorities to use technologies of
anonymity. It's not that hard: call up your local state Department of
Transportation or regional transportation authority, ask to talk to the
expert on automatic toll collection, find out what their plans are in
that area, and ask whether they are planning to use anonymous
technologies. Then call up the local newspaper, ask to talk to the
reporter who covers technology and privacy issues, and tell them what
you've learned.
On the dark side, here is a quotation from a report prepared for the
State of Washington's Department of Transportation by a nationally
prominent consulting firm called JHK & Associates (page 6-9):
Cellular Phone Probes. Cellular phones can be part of the backbone
of a region-wide surveillance system. By distributing sensors
(receivers) at multiple sites (such as cellular telephone mast
sites), IVHS technology can employ direction finding to locate phones
and to identify vehicles where appropriate. Given the growing
penetration of cellular phones (i.e., estimated 22% of all cars by
2000), further refinements will permit much wider area surveillance
of vehicle speeds and origin-destination movements.
This is part of a larger discussion of technologies of surveillance
that can be used to monitor traffic patterns and individual drivers for
a wide variety of purposes, with and without individuals' consent and
knowledge. The report speaks frankly of surveillance as one of three
functionalities of the IVHS infrastructure. (The others are
communications and data processing.) The means of surveillance are
grouped into "static (roadway-based)", "mobile (vehicle-based)", and
"visual (use of live video cameras)". The static devices include
"in-pavement detectors", "overhead detectors", "video image processing
systems", and "vehicle occupancy detectors". The mobile devices
include various types of "automatic vehicle identification", "automatic
vehicle location", "smart cards", and the just-mentioned "cellular
phone probes". The visual devices are based on closed-circuit
television (CCTV) cameras that can seve a wide range of purposes.
The underlying problem here, it seems to me, is an orientation toward
centralized control: gather the data, pull it into regional management
centers, and start manipulating traffic flows by every available
means. Another approach, much more consonant with the times, would be
to do things in a decentralized fashion: protecting privacy through
total anonymity and making aggregate data available over the Internet
and wireless networks so that people can make their own decisions.
Total surveillance and centralized control has been the implicit
philosophy of computer system design for a long time. But the
technology exists now to change that, and I can scarcely imagine a more
important test case than the public roads. People need to use roads to
participate in the full range of associations (educational, political,
social, religious, labor, charitable, etc etc) that make up a free
society. If we turn the roads into a zone of total surveillance then
we chill that fundamental right and undermine the very foundation of
freedom.
--
Phil Agre, UCSD
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 08 Aug 1995 13:00:00 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Info on CPD
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of
technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and
gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated).
Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative
requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu.
This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet
eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of
forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be
taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual
contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at
the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform
the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply.
If you read this from the comp.society.privacy newsgroup and wish to
contribute a message, you should simply post your contribution. As a
moderated newsgroup, attempts to post to the group are normally turned
into eMail to the submission address below.
On the other hand, if you read the digest eMailed to you, you generally
need only use the Reply feature of your mailer to contribute. If you
do so, it is best to modify the "Subject:" line of your mailing.
Contributions to CPD should be submitted, with appropriate, substantive
SUBJECT: line, otherwise they may be ignored. They must be relevant,
sound, in good taste, objective, cogent, coherent, concise, and
nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome, but not personal attacks. Do
not include entire previous messages in responses to them. Include
your name & legitimate Internet FROM: address, especially from
.UUCP and .BITNET folks. Anonymized mail is not accepted. All
contributions considered as personal comments; usual disclaimers
apply. All reuses of CPD material should respect stated copyright
notices, and should cite the sources explicitly; as a courtesy;
publications using CPD material should obtain permission from the
contributors.
Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of
submission. If selected, they are printed within two or three days.
The moderator reserves the right to delete extraneous quoted material.
He may change the SUBJECT: line of an article in order to make it
easier for the reader to follow a discussion. He will not, however,
alter or edit or append to the text except for purely technical
reasons.
A library of back issues is available on ftp.cs.uwm.edu [129.89.9.18].
Login as "ftp" with password identifying yourid@yoursite. The archives
are in the directory "pub/comp-privacy".
People with gopher capability can most easily access the library at
gopher.cs.uwm.edu.
Mosaic users will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu.
This following line will be deleted in future listings: Older
archives are also held at ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133].
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
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
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V7 #010
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