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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 19479
[Civil]
Date Posted:
3/18/2008
7:07:55 am EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,019
RSS: 13,846
Comments: 5
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ACLU 1, State 0 In Battle To Protect Your Privacy Rights
Author: Kerry Dougherty Source: The Virginian-Pilot (VA)
Title: ACLU 1, STATE 0 IN BATTLE TO PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS
For years I've been begging everyone to ignore those bellyachers over at the ACLU. Earlier this month, the General Assembly did just that.
Unfortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union is right this time.
For once, it isn't engaged in a wacky mission to protect the rights of prisoners to grow dreadlocks or to block before-meal blessings at VMI.
Nope. This time, the Virginia chapter of the ACLU is defending our privacy.
The ACLU wisely decided to oppose a piece of legislative junk: SB133. Still, it passed the General Assembly and was signed by the governor last week.
The law says Virginians cannot "intentionally communicate another individual's Social Security number" publicly, even if that highly personal information came from a government Web site.
But that sidesteps a more important question: Why is the government posting our personal information on the Internet, anyway?
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Community Thoughts: There are 5 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Commentary | Mar 19th. at 11:51:31 pm EDT
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NOVA (New Brunswick, New Jersey) - Email Me
Of course they ACLU is right! How INSANE is out govt. to do this?!
Is this nationwide, or only in VIrginia?
I'm going to check the internet now and see if my info is out there..... ! Geezzzz
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| No Safety Net In The World .. | Mar 18th. at 4:15:52 pm EDT
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me
will protect information from being used if the government insists on putting it out there. Even if it is promised to be secured--don't count on it.
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| VA Crooks, Privacy Paradigm | Mar 18th. at 1:51:51 pm EDT
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me
There are two separate issues here, which are important to keep distinct.
Virginia has a long standing tradition of violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, aggravated by Federal coercion of states to use driver's licenses as if national identity cards. One example is when counties post notices calling for drivers to submit SSN's and car registration numbers to obtain tax tags. Such notices never include the mandatory Privacy Act notice that they're illegal to circulate without that notice, that there's no valid legal basis to demand SSN's, that they're required to process the same documents if one declines to supply an SSN, and that the whole scheme as operated is illegal. County bureaucrats sometimes pretend such procedures are valid because "our computer software predates that change of Federal law". I've yet to see any evidence a county had a PC based LAN and related software prior to 1974. In this respect, local and state government need a HUGE enema, and a big flush of illegal as well as unethical operating practices.
That's a separate set of issues from open records access, and what the nebulous if not fluid meaning of a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is under the 4th Amendment, balanced against what are inherently public records. Civil court divorce decrees are often a far more sensitive side of that than examples in this article, based on generic public documents less likely to contain details of disputed personal history. Is privacy invaded if such records are routinely placed online in searchable form, or with free access, when traditionally many are never officially transcribed unless someone pays a court reporter to do so? Is it only fair that if a tabloid newspaper can do so for someone not intending to be a public figure who somehow lands in the news, just as they'd routinely do with celebrities, that local police and teachers and other government agents have their records freely and openly available? How about your neighbor, or the people whose kids or church you dislike down the street or across town? Does convenient, low cost or tax funded access change privacy rights relative to inconvenient or delayed and costly (paid transcription by a court reporter only after a formal work order) traditional means of open records access? Or, did those privacy issues never justify impeded access in the first place, while emerging low cost technology improves a public right to know?
Given the nature of 4th Amendment precedent to be subjective and reflect social attitudes, those are very messy issues to attempt to interpret in law and find any supposed rational basis or stronger legal principles on which to base how we balance the practical application with the theoretical rights.
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| I Had To Google Search | Mar 18th. at 10:59:59 am EDT
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Sy (Atlanta, Georgia) - Email Me
I had to see if my ss# was online. Thankfully, no. Glad I don't live in VA.
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