Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 08:12:44 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#036
Computer Privacy Digest Tue, 31 Oct 95 Volume 7 : Issue: 036
Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine
Re: Call Blocking
Re: Exon Bill in US Congress
Re: Voter Registration Records
Re: Voter Registration Records
Re: Junk Sales Calls
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Re: Copyright Notice
Re: Copyright Notice
Re: Copyright Notice
Re: Email Addresses for Sale by Direct Marketing Agency
Privacy of SSN
Telephone Odds and Ends
Re: Electronic Road Use Taxes in the UK and Elsewhere
Info on CPD [unchanged since 08/18/95]
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn)
Date: 28 Oct 1995 13:45:59 -0400
Subject: Re: Call Blocking
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
WELKER@a1.vsdec.nl.nuwc.navy.mil writes: The telco default is to
publish your number cuz most want their numbers listed.
So long a the telcos charge folks to get their number unlisted, we do
not know if the person wants the number listed or not. But we do know
that having an unlisted number is an economic issue.
Furthermore, in some areas of the nation more folks are unlisted, than
listed. So in those areas (Las Vegas - Fort Lee, NJ - etc.) the default
is unlisted
Since telcos have to do something special to "turn off" your
listing, the added labor can be passed on to you, not to mention
cost of lost revenue from not being able to sell your name, which
would otherwise show up on everybody's phone bill (a fact that the
phone company will surely have reminded the UTC of).
Under Amertiech in the Chicago area, it costs $12.50 to change your
listed number to unlisted. If there `was' anything `special' to do
(other than a single key- stroke), the $12.50 paid for it. What then
is the addittional $1.45 per month `unlisted' charge for?
Now, with charges for calls to directory service in place, their is no
reasonable basis to charge consumers for an unlisted number... unless
it is reasonable that the telcos be allowed to use vaporous rationals
to soak the public an any fashion conceivable.
Better than an unlisted number, list your number in the directory under
your first and maiden, or first and middle name, and ASK YOUR TELCO TO
REMOVE YOUR ADDRESS FROM THE BOOK..
Robert Bulmash
Private Citizen, Inc. 1/800-CUT-JUNK
------------------------------
From: shabbir@panix.com (Shabbir J. Safdar)
Date: 28 Oct 1995 13:50:43 -0400
Subject: Re: Exon Bill in US Congress
Organization: Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org)
g4vegeta@cdf.toronto.edu (Me) writes: Does anyone know when the US
congress is going to vote on James Exon's Communications Decency
Act (or if they've already voted)? I'm doing a critique on it and I
wondering if a decision has been made yet.
The bills (there's four different versions of net-regulation on the
table) are now being considered by a conference committee as part of
the larger Telecomm Deregulation bill.
You can learn more about this by checking out the BillWatch, a
publication of the Voters Telecommunications Watch, at
http://www.vtw.org/billwatch/
Try issue #22.
------------------------------
From: prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn)
Date: 28 Oct 1995 14:11:46 -0400
Subject: Re: Voter Registration Records
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
Robert Gellman <rgellman@cais.cais.com> writes: "Access to voter
registration lists varies considerably among the fifty states.
About half restrict access to or use of voter registration
records. California is a restrictive state, allowing disclosure to
candidates, to researchers, and to a few others. "
Concerning California voter registrations -
Earlier this year it was learned that a major player in the list sales
industry recently acquired a copy of a California voters registration
list, and in order to update and add more demographic information to it
(thereby increasing its markatability) the firm did a bogus ice cream
survey, junk calling those on this list with insipid questions about
their family's ice cream consumption. Interspersed, were questions as
to family size, income, ages, sex, education levels.... the works.
What the firm did was both illegal and unethical. When the firm was
questioned about thier behavior they responded by saying: `people would
not give us the info we needed if we told them the truth!'
By the way, the subject firm is a m Direct Marketing Association
member... in fact, its CEO was on the DMA's board... Kinda makes ya
wonder.... WHAT'S THE DMA ALL ABOUT... REALLY!
Robert Bulmash
Private Citizen, Inc. 1/800-CUT-JUNK
------------------------------
From: bo774@freenet.carleton.ca (Kelly Bert Manning)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 05:48:30 GMT
Subject: Re: Voter Registration Records
Organization: The National Capital FreeNet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
During the last provincial election voter list disks were stolen from a
candidate's office, while computers and software were left alone.
I found out that a data extractor had obtained my name and address from
a fiche copy of the voter's list after I obtained a Judge's Order
compelling him to disclose his source. He purchased it from Election's
BC 5 days before BC's FOI/POP law received final passage. Before I got
the court order he had claimed to have obtained this from Municipal
property records. Something that isn't possible because no such records
exist(a provincial agency keeps the records for all property) and
because any such request would have been logged under a municipal bylaw
that was enacted before the provincial law.
I have since received confirmation, after an 11 month delay and initial
attempt to brush me off with a bill for software development and
processing costs, that this same data extractor pulled my property
assessment and land title registration records after getting my notice
of claim.
They were not able to check the records quickly, even though I gave
them the name of the individual involved because the computer ID he
used had a different name associated with it due to a "registration
error".
Without the intervention of staff at the Office of the Information and
Privacy Commissioner I'd probably never have received the access audit
trail details. This seems to have a way to go before individuals can
easily and quickly learn who has been pulling their files.
While Elections BC is attempting to restrict lists to electoral
purposes only there seem to be some difficulties. The tracing of car
licence numbers by anti-abortion zealots seems particularly problematic
because they have a "family heritage" provincial party and are entitled
to receive a copy of the list for the whole province, sorted by voter
name.
There is also the issue of fringe parties and candidates. At the small
claims settlement conference the guy who pulled my name off a voter's
listed commented, in what I thought was not entirely an idle manner, of
forming his own party if he couldn't get a copy of the voters lists
from candidates as part of junk mailings he would be doing for them.
Perhaps he could just volunteer and take a few diskettes along. How
much care goes into checking campaign volunteers(apart from Ross
Perot's efforts along this line).
So far we don't seem to have a provincial counterpart of the "Christian
Heritage Party" or it's clones, which seem to see nothing odd about
displaying a party symbol consisting of a cross stylized to resemble a
nazi swastika, but we have recently seen many examples of fraud and
coverups from both parties that have controlled the government for the
past 40 years.
Elections BC no longer provides free copies to libraries or colleges,
as it did in past years
I personally don't see why there is any need to disclose addresses or
specific voting areas. If someone has a concern about a particular
individual being a voter they could contact the registrar of voter and
challenge the voter to appear at the registry with documentation. If
they reach a pre-set limit of challenges without finding any fraud they
should be told to find something more productive to do. The main issues
are that people who choose to vote should only vote once, and only in
the district where they reside. The first concern can be addressed by
an all province list, without disclosing addresses(apart from the
province). The second could be addressed by my challenge proposal.
At least 1 party(NDP-self identified as "social democrats") makes a
point of going after people who don't seem to be on the list because
they imagine that people who move often are of a lower socio-economic
status and would be more inclined to buy what they are pitching. Even
making a point of staying off the list seems doesn't seem to be enough
to be left alone, although it does seem to lower your chances of being
summoned for jury duty.
------------------------------
From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:45 GMT
Subject: Re: Junk Sales Calls
Organization: North Norwich Telephone
haz1@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Bill) writes: 1) Instead of making "*67"
an option for blocking your line from transmitting its ID when you
make a call, make NOT transmitting ID be the default behavior in
all cases, and provide a code like "*67", which you must dial at
the start of a call if you DO want to transmit your phone number to
the person receiving the call.
I second this! For those who have unlisted numbers, *67 would only be
used to call those who block calls from anonymous callers.
------------------------------
From: "Bill McClatchie" <wmcclatc@nyx10.cs.du.edu>
Date: 26 Oct 1995 05:53:19 +0000
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: the Twilight Zone
mikeb@ssd.fsi.com (Mike Bates) For what it's worth, Deja News
doesn't archive alt.*, soc.*, talk.*, or any of the binaries
groups.
I would say it does, considering that I found many posts made solely to
groups like alt.bigfoot, talk.abortion, and alt.flame - along with
several cross-posted from these groups to the groups like soc.women
At first I thought this was odd, perhaps just a strategy to
eliminate junk from the database. It also provides a way for
eliminating most of the controversial groups from the database and
from an author's profile.
They also carry a great deal of local groups which are supposedly not
world readable. Which releases a great deal of strange, silly, and
nasty messages that the original poster had no reason to think would be
shown outside of a "small community".
When I post, I am well aware that my posts are going to be around for a
long time - and this is the reason I have an account at Netcom with my
real ID hidden from world view.
And a search of small local only groups will turn up quite a few. One
such group being netcom.shell.test - a non-world readable group where
people post some really bizzarre things at times, nasty remarks and
flame the IX.netcom.com posters there for a wide variety of reasons
with no holds barred.
Not something i would expect to ever be in the public eye - yet it is
now with no warning that it could or would be. And I found several
other local groups listed (no cross-posts) with similar types of
material.
Talk about blindsiding.
------------------------------
From: chip@unicom.com (Chip Rosenthal)
Date: 28 Oct 1995 22:35:22 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: Unicom Systems Development, Austin, TX
I think there are some strong parallels between the concerns over the
DejaNews service and CLID (often called Caller ID).
In both cases, an expectation of privacy evolved, and many people came
to depend upon it. The privacy existed because the technical tools
didn't. Once the phone company figured out a way to deliver the
calling party's number, or another company figured out a way to store
and search large numbers of news articles, the privacy no longer was
there. That's troubling because we've grown to expect it to be.
I'm highly ambivalent about both of these developments. It concerns me
that the privacy that I've always known is gone. But the new services
they provide can be useful.
What's clear is all of these sorts of developments will force me to
change my behavior. For instance, with a service such as DejaNews, I
would never consider "de-lurking" in a sensitive newsgroup. I would
use an anon remailer instead.
Here is a suggestion for people who want to keep a posting out of their
DejaNews profile: change your From: address. Recently, I wanted to
make a posting to rec.music.misc, a newsgroup I do not carry. To do
so, I telnetted to my ISP and posted from there. I added a Reply-To:
with my normal address, but the From: pointed to an address at the
ISP. DejaNews recorded the message according to the From:, thus it
does not appear in my profile. Many news clients allow you to modify
the From: address, so you could do this without having accounts on
other machines (as I did). PLEASE, however, if you futz with the
From:, put a usable Reply-To: in the message so that people don't waste
time composing responses that bounce. (Or just use an anon remailer.)
--
Chip Rosenthal I won't represent the US in the Summer Olympics.
Unicom Systems Development - http://www.unicom.com/john-hiatt/
PGP key: http://www.unicom.com/personal/chip.html
------------------------------
From: tburgess@uoguelph.ca (Todd W Burgess)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 18:21:19 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: University of Guelph
I think the DejaNews site was not a question of if there would be such
a site but when would there be such a site. I have always been
suspicious that anything I posted might be archived and resurface in
the future. So its always been my policy never to post anything I
wouldn't want my mother to read.
I don't think compiling statistics on Usenet is anything new. I imagine
various organizations have been doing it for years. I think DejaNews
big thing is its the first Usenet database available to the general
public. No longer is Usenet statistics and storage limited to big
organizations with big budgets and a security policy which ensures
their private databases remain private.
I think the whole Dejanews issue isn't about the storage of Usenet
articles its about the possibilty that what you post publicly may be
used against you. I know the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have
been quoted as saying that they do "monitor" certain newsgroups. Which
I don't think is a bad thing.
If somebody was to state on national television that they molest
children I think the general public would want the police to
investigate the individual. Just because the person posts it in
alt.sex.pedophillia doesn't mean they should be immune to criminal
prosecution.
Usenet is a lot like television. If you wouldn't want to say it on
television then you shouldn't say it on Usenet either. Both are public
forums and both could be used against you.
EMAIL : tburgess@uoguelph.ca
URL : http://eddie.cis.uoguelph.ca/people/tburgess/tburgess.html
LOCATION : Universty of Guelph
MAJOR : Computer Science
------------------------------
From: brown@altair.krl.caltech.edu (C. Titus Brown)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 20:38:01 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: Avida Artificial Life group
Bill McClatchie <wmcclatc@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote: And the profile
could show someone as posting to groups like the alt.pedophilia.*
groups, and quite possibly they won't have the article you followed
up to which had a "unusual" follow-up line. Something like that
ought to look good on a quick check of what you do online.
Which highlights an interesting question: are there any restrictions on
the sources of information that a company can use in "checking out" a
potential/current employee?
I'm not sure if it's practical or even feasible to try to legally limit
a background check by big companies, but I wonder if any companies have
a hiring policy about this sort of thing.
Cheers,
P.S. Being a first-time poster, I went and looked at the FAQs
available from this newsgroup in one of the archive services. I was
kind of surprised not to see something on my question..?
--
Titus Brown, brown@krl.caltech.edu.
------------------------------
From: ehunt@bga.com (Eric Hunt)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 16:19:11 -0600
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: Lil' Ole' Me
Jay@Mindspring.com (Jay Harrell) wrote: don't care to know. I
realize it's a hell of a lot easier to track stuff down when it's
computerized and on the Internet, but really I think that the
answer here is for people to not post what they don't want others
to read.
Thanks for the comments. Almost everyone who replied to me said
basically the same thing. I find that depressing. What needs to happen
is for netnews technology to evolve into something beyond that with the
idea of having some expectation of privacy (ie prohibiting either
through agreement or technology the archiving of discussions) or to
improve the technology for dealing with mailing lists (which already
have an expectation of privacy) so they are easier to use. I, Internet
citizen for 5+ years now, to this day find mailing lists annoying as
hell and only subscribe to the bare minimum.
Deja News clarified their position with me, and it's not what I wanted
to hear. Through several messages, they basically told me that this
purge of my entries was a one time and one time thing only and that
anything else I post to UseNet would continue to be indexed and
archived.
As a final note, they ignored my request for what their position was on
moderated newsgroups where the moderator claims a compilation copyright
that either directly or indirectly (through the comp. (c)) prevented
the archiving of that newsgroup.
--
Eric Hunt __ ehunt@bga.com (preferred)
Austin, TX \/ hunt@metrowerks.com
------------------------------
From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:37 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: North Norwich Telephone
Eric Hunt <hunt@austin.metrowerks.com> writes: I'd welcome any
comments public or private on my arguments. Is the reality of
UseNet completely different from the banners and net.guide
documents, or am I being completely silly for assuming there was
any expectation of privacy when posting to obscure newsgroups?
I don't know if any newsgroup should be considered "obscure", the local
ISP carries over 8000 newsgroups, some of them will likely never be
touched. But there are probably lots of people using them in other
areas.
I consider anything I post to Usenet public, just as if I were writing
a letter to the editor of a newspaper. Deja News is archiving news
opening, how do we know if our government(s) or other organizations are
not doing it secretly?
On the other hand, I oppose to using information obtained from usenet
postings for marketing purposes. But can we stop that, or is it too
late? Everytime we send in a registration card for a piece of tool,
equipment, software, etc. Our names and addresses are put into various
databases, then bought and sold around the world.
------------------------------
From: ajm@mcs.com (Alan Miller)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 23:58:23 -0600
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: Bob's Bass House; We Got Bass!
I took a look at it, and overall I expect to find it more useful than
not. This lets me do on a larger scale things that I've in the past
been limited in, such as searching for information on doing X in VB,
etc.
I did fire off a quick letter to them mentioning the privacy concerns
that many people have, along with a couple of suggestions to reduce
those concerns, but I think the most effective way to do that is to
start using anonymous remailers or semi-anonymous/pseudonymous
accounts.
The suggestions were: 1) don't plan on adding mailing lists other than
those going to bit.listserv groups to the database (see response below)
and 2) consider supporting a field in the article header such as
"X-NoArchive: ", where the only relevant factor is the presence of the
field, and it prevents archiving of the posting. This doesn't stop
followups, but that would be a _much_ more difficult undertaking. No
response on this one.
The response on mailing lists was: (extracted from email) >If and when
we end up archiving mailing list posts, we'll certainly make >sure the
recipients of such gated lists know explicitly that their posts >will
find their way to our database. We believe that mailing list
>correspondents have reason to be informed that their lists are being
>archived in a searchable index, unlike with UseNet where it's pretty
well >known that posting is world-wide publishing.
--
Alan Miller \\ ajm@mcs.com
<a href="http://www.mcs.net/~ajm/home.html">AJM's WWW page</a>
------------------------------
From: Adam Barclay <adam@st.elec.uow.edu.au>
Date: 30 Oct 1995 18:49:12 +1100
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
"Bill McClatchie" <wmcclatc@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote: And the profile
could show someone as posting to groups like the alt.pedophilia.*
groups
And for a variation on a theme, it might be interesting to see the
reaction of Deja News staff should anyone forge posts to questionable
newsgroups in their names.
At the very least it might let Deja News users know how worthless and
inaccurate the service can be.
--
Adam Barclay |
adam@troll.elec.uow.edu.au | Twice the Caffiene
------------------------------
From: George Demosthenes Nickas <demos@dejanews.com>
Date: 30 Oct 1995 16:53:17 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: DejaNews
Eric --
Since you quoted me, I thought it best to clarify and expand on a few things.
Upon learning from this discussion group of the Author Profiles
available to anyone with a web client at Deja News
(http://www.dejanews.com), I investigated. Sure enough, they had
their database engine compile a summary of all the newsgroups I had
posted to. At that point, I used their mailto: form to politely but
firmly request that they remove me from their database, as I felt
it was an invasion of my privacy. I received a response from
George Demosthenes Nickas, Customer Liaison (demos@dejanews.com)
that basically said "OK, we'll remove you, but didn't you realize
that by posting to UseNet you opened yourself up to something just
like this. We have no sympathy."
Untrue and misquoted. There is a difference between not having
sympathy for someone and not believing in the logic or validity of
their arguments. Our position is certainly the latter, but that
doesn't mean we don't care about your argument specifically, or
privacy/anonymity arguments in general. We *do* care (which is why, as
a courtesy, we removed the text of your posts), we just don't agree.
I received another response this morning from Steve Madere,
madere@home.dejanews.com (I deleted his original, so I don't know
his title) that was even more to the point, and he quoted numerous
net.guide documents and the banner from the tin newsreader, where
they all remind you that you should be aware of the implications
of posting to possibly controversial newsgroups.
Steve Madere is president and owner of DejaNews. As he mentioned, it
does seem that the various extant documents on what posting to UseNet
entails support our viewpoint. The documents overtly assume, from
various perspectives (network resources, propriety, etc.), the
amazingly wide distribution of articles posted to UseNet.
I'd like to include my full response to your quoted email as I think it
contained a few salient points about our privacy stand (first level of
quotation is your email):
------------------------
You are not providing a responsible service. The potential for
discrimination and harassment, as well as targetted direct
marketing is now infinitely easier with your service.
By virtue of its entirely unmanageable size, UseNet was essentially
a "private" place. Just as you can move to New York City and do
*lots* of things that absolutely no one will notice, you could post
to weird and potentially sensitive areas on UseNet and no one would
be the wiser.
But if someone notices a person on a street or in a dark alleyway in
New York City and tells everybody about the weird things she's done
(which is not even *close* to what we do), can she reasonably get mad
at them and call them irresponsible?
I think that's really the key issue here. Because someone has had the
semblance of privacy in a public place, it doesn't mean that privacy is
their right or even to be expected. I believe that, given the evidence
of what UseNet is (DejaNews or not), it is not logical to posit any
expectation of privacy there.
Private, communicative venues on the Net exist elsewhere. I really
believe that the kind of communication you describe would be best
accomplished via private email, (non-gated) mailing lists and IRC which
is not, as far as I know, logged anywhere. My sense of UseNet is that
people like it *because* it's public, and restrictions on that public
nature would only hurt UseNet.
I don't even have that much of a problem with being able to get
lists of posts a user makes. The scary part is the Author Profile
that provides the Executive Summary of where a particular user
frequents in UseNet.
To clarify, the profile doesn't summarize what they *read*, only where
they say what they say in the "crowded room" of newsgroups (this
analogy is from one of the UseNet FAQs).
---------------------
Obscurity is only privacy de facto and shouldn't be taken as any kind
of guarantee. As I mentioned above, our contention is that all of
UseNet is, by reasonable standards of observation, a public discussion
forum. Just because you were able to post relatively unnoticed does
not mean that this is your right.
We do care that you are concerned, it's just that it seems like you are
"shooting the messenger" here. I encourage you to check out "A Primer
on Working with the UseNet Community" at:
http://www.smartpages.com/faqs/usenet/primer/part1/faq.html
Since the existence of DejaNews will affect UseNet, I would really like
to see some more discussion on this topic, and toward the end, we'll be
creating an alt.* newsgroup for the debate, as well as adding a
discussion of our view on this issue to our pages.
George D. Nickas
--
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
& George Demosthenes Nickas | D E J A N E W S &
& Customer Support Representative | &
& demos@dejanews.com | *The* Tool for &
& | Searching USENET! &
& Reply to ---> help@dejanews.com | &
& ---> comment@dejanews.com | http://www.dejanews.com/ &
& ---> bugs@dejanews.com | &
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 30 Oct 1995 11:35:15 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Eric Hunt <hunt@austin.metrowerks.com> writes: I'd welcome any
comments public or private on my arguments. Is the reality of
UseNet completely different from the banners and net.guide
documents, or am I being completely silly for assuming there was
any expectation of privacy when posting to obscure newsgroups?
Except for one thing, and that is that the Copyright owner is the
original author and s/he has the right to reserve publication even
though the material is widely available.
Thus, if I post something with the caviat "not for commercial use" or
some such logo, I have the right to restrict those who wish to use my
material for gain.
In the case of Deja News they clearly intend to do this for profit and
wish to use my postings as the source of that profit.
They do contribute value in that they organize the postings but they
then deliver as a product my work for their gain and without my
permission.
By the way the compilation of names in some order, like the phone book
has been shown to be insufficient value added to allow for copyright.
--
Leonard P. Levine e-mail levine@cs.uwm.edu
Professor, Computer Science Office 1-414-229-5170
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Fax 1-414-229-6958
Box 784, Milwaukee, WI 53201
PGP Public Key: finger llevine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu
------------------------------
From: crowdog@crosslink.net (Erik Rensberger)
Date: 31 Oct 1995 02:28:27 GMT
Subject: Re: Author Profiles at Deja News
Organization: The_Squiredom
"Bill McClatchie" <wmcclatc@nyx10.cs.du.edu> writes: And the
profile could show someone as posting to groups like the
alt.pedophilia.* groups, and quite possibly they won't have the
article you followed up to which had a "unusual" follow-up line.
Something like that ought to look good on a quick check of what you
do online.
Mike Bates (mikeb@ssd.fsi.com) wrote: For what it's worth, Deja
News doesn't archive alt.*, soc.*, talk.*, or any of the binaries
groups. At first I thought this was odd, perhaps just a strategy
to eliminate junk from the database. It also provides a way for
eliminating most of the controversial groups from the database and
from an author's profile.
I've seen a couple people mention this--that Dejanews doesn't cover
alt.* groups--but I have FOUND alt.* articles in the indexes returned.
It's a bit hard to figure out just how this thing works; sometimes
relatively recent posts in high-profile ngs don't appear, while much
older comments in more obscure places do. But DON'T think that the
alt.* hierarchy or any other hierarchy is specifically not covered!
-- crowdog
------------------------------
From: Christopher Stacy <cstacy@spacy.Boston.MA.US>
Date: 29 Oct 1995 01:09:55 -0500
Subject: Re: Copyright Notice
les@Steam.Stanford.EDU (Les Earnest) My understanding of the
copyright law is different -- that the copyright belongs to the
person who first puts "copyrightable" material in a permanent form,
such as a paper copy or a magnetic recording. Simply posting an
article on Usenet does not meet this standard.
According the U.S. Code 17, the Copyright Act of 1976 (as ammended 1988
and 1993), copyright protection automatically exists for any original
works of authorship ("words, numbers, notes, sounds, pictures, or any
other graphic or symbolic indicia") that are fixed in any form
("written, printed, photographic, sculptural, punched, magnetic, or any
other stable form") of expression, "now known or later developed, from
which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated,
either directly or with the aid of a machine or device".
The disks on which USENET articles are stored certainly falls under the
above. But even if you were to consider a posting a "broadcast" like a
TV show, those are copyright protected, too.
Also, you don't lose your copyright by giving thousands of free copies
away. Nor (unlike trademarks) do you lose your copyright by not
aggressively defending it. Finally, things are only in the public
domain if the copyright holder has explicitly labeled them as being
so.
------------------------------
From: shields@tembel.org (Michael Shields)
Date: 30 Oct 1995 04:47:29 -0000
Subject: Re: Copyright Notice
Organization: Tembel's Hedonic Commune
Les Earnest <les@Steam.Stanford.EDU> wrote: My understanding of the
copyright law is different -- that the copyright belongs to the
person who first puts "copyrightable" material in a permanent form,
such as a paper copy or a magnetic recording. Simply posting an
article on Usenet does not meet this standard.
Why not? Usenet is recorded on magnetic media.
I think the line of reasoning that would apply to DejaNews is:
1. You own your own words. This is well-established, and I'm sure it
would extend to Usenet.
2. By posting them to Usenet, you grant a license (using the Newsgroups
and Distribution headers) to all Usenet sites to store and duplicate
and make accessible that text, in the context of Usenet. I think you
can make a strong case for this; reason demands it, or Usenet would be
illegal.
3. DejaNews is part of Usenet, so this general license applies. This
is the crux. I don't know exactly what would define a Usenet site, but
I ca'n't think of any criteria DejaNews doesn't meet.
--
Shields.
------------------------------
From: Christopher Stacy <cstacy@spacy.Boston.MA.US>
Date: 30 Oct 1995 09:07:27 -0500
Subject: Re: Copyright Notice
Les Earnest seems to be suggesting that the owner of the disk drive
upon which the first copy is fixed is the owner of the material, and
that the the copyright holder is not necessarily the author.
I don't agree. Copyrights are held by the author unless the author
explicitly re-assigns them. It does not matter who owns the wax or
magnetic disk, typewriter, piece of paper, printing press, or bound
pages of a book, because we are protecting the words, not the medium.
If you let me use your typewriter or disk drive so that I may author
some material, I still own the copyright, unless we were engaged in a
"work for hire" contract that covered that particular piece of work.
------------------------------
From: fyoung@oxford.net (F Young)
Date: 29 Oct 1995 22:53:41 GMT
Subject: Re: Email Addresses for Sale by Direct Marketing Agency
Organization: North Norwich Telephone
prvtctzn@aol.com (Prvt Ctzn) writes: What's important is that you
remember, most all of this `ethical' crap that the DMA feeds to us
and our legislators is public relations fluff. I don't get a sense
that the DMA believes it, so why should you believe it... or rely
on it.
What I do when I receive junk e-mail is I'll forward the whole message
back to the originator (in case the return-path was one of those
nobody@nowhere.com, I'll forward them to an address in the body of the
message) with a line that says "Please remove my address from you
mailing list."
If enough people do that, perhaps they'll change their mind. :)
------------------------------
From: WELKER@a1.vsdec.nl.nuwc.navy.mil
Date: 30 Oct 1995 08:20:40 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Privacy of SSN
wrf@ecse.rpi.edu (Wm. Randolph U Franklin) This one is for the
people who don't think that it hurts to let your SSN be public. It
is from the Albany Times Union, Wed Oct 25, page B-4, POLICE
BLOTTER: Bethlehem, 2:23 pm. IMPERSONATION: Someone used
complainant's son's name and SSN to obtain a MC/V card from
Citibank... When the application was checked, fraud was
discovered. Victim also learned the same person illegally used his
SSN to get a Discovery card....
Son's name and SSN can be easily obtained without regard to what
measures he has taken to secure it. There are several issues of
interest:
1. SSN cannot be secured, because it is the only identifier unique to
living individuals that is readily portable. Paradoxically, SSNs
are not unique (much to the distress of those who wrote their
company's employee database twenty years ago).
2. Possession of SSN and name (and address...) should not be (though
is) sufficient to obtain credit. I go so far as to suggest that
credit card "activation" be accompished by physically verifying the
ID of the card user at some location (bank/retailer) and having a
photo on file before allowing use of the card.
3. Strong encyption could also help in this area.
------------------------------
From: Robert Ellis Smith <0005101719@mcimail.com>
Date: 30 Oct 95 12:48 EST
Subject: Telephone Odds and Ends
I'm curious why people would want a service that automatically blocks
out any incoming call that has Call Blocking. Aren't there going to be
occasions when family members and others call - perhaps in urgent
situations - from phones with Call Blocking? What kind of an ordered
life do these people have that they do not anticipate that a child of
theirs or a spouse or a fellow employee might want to reach them from a
stranger's telephone that has Call Blocking?
And isn't CALL TRACE a much more effective way to handle harassing
calls than Caller ID?
I'm curious why a person who objects to paying for unlisted service
doesn't simply ask for his or her ADDRESS not to be listed (which costs
nothing), if this meets his or her needs. Or why doesn't he pay a few
more dollars a month and get a second line w ith a DISTINCTIVE RING?
This second line (which is listed in the name of a fictitious family
member) can be the private line, which is disclosed only to a few
friends and family. If it is never used for ordering products, the
telemarketing calls will dw indle. The first line can be the public
line, which the person uses on all credit and employment applications,
pizza deliveries, check-cashings, etc. etc. The person answers the
public line only when he or she feels like it and only when prepared to
dea l with strangers.
Peter B. White asked from Australia whether any law prohibits passing
on Caller ID information. The Federal Communications Commission's
regulation on Caller ID, which has the force of law, requires
businesses to use information from Caller ID - or its lo ng-distance
equivalent, Automatic Number Identification (ANI) - only internally,
and not to disclose it for commercial purposes, unless the telephone
customer affirmatively consents.
--
Robert Ellis Smith/ Privacy Journal/ 401/274-7861
------------------------------
From: Dan Tebbutt <Dan_Tebbutt@acp.com.au>
Date: 31 Oct 95 16:03:34
Subject: Re: Electronic Road Use Taxes in the UK and Elsewhere
[If any RRE reader in the UK obtains a copy of the report mentioned
here, I'd love to get a copy. Also, I have been hearing about
public resistance to electronic road taxes in the Netherlands as
well, and I'd appreciate any documentation or other leads on this
topic. Finally, if anybody is informed about the privacy aspects
of the newly announced Singapore system for electronic road
taxation then I'd much appreciate references, clippings, etc.
Thanks a lot.]
I also believe that Premier Jeff Kennett's Liberal (=conservative)
state government in Victoria, one of the states of Australia, is
planning to introduce an automated traffic debiting system some time
soon on new freeways in Melbourne. I don;t have more info, but I am
sure someone from Victoria could help. I noticed on the testimonials
there was someone@deakin.edu.au which is in Victoria. They might be
able to help.
The entry point for Australian govt Web servers is
http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/ozgov.html which may lead you to some info
on VicRoads.
Rgds
DAN :-]
------------------------------
From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" <levine@blatz.cs.uwm.edu>
Date: 18 Oct 1995 13:55:25 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 08/18/95]
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.
[new: Ordinary copyrighted material should not be submitted. If a]
[copyright owner wishes to make material available for electronic]
[distribution then a message such as "Copyright 1988 John Doe.]
[Permission to distribute free electronic copies is hereby granted but]
[printed copy or copy distributed for financial gain is forbidden" would]
[be appropriate.]
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 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.
Web browsers will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu.
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
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 | Web: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu
---------------------------------+-----------------------------------------
------------------------------
End of Computer Privacy Digest V7 #036
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