Privacy in America; pah! Who needs it...?

[Guest cloricus]

I was just surfing /. and I noticed this article ([url=http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-5137488.html?tag=nefd_top]CNet[/url]) regarding the US Treasury departments treatment of around ten thousand individuals who had commented on a proposal it had put forward.

Not really a problem you might think? Well not only is a government organisation breaking a binding contract of privacy to the people who sent the comments it's posting all of their details on a web site, still not a problem? Think every spammer on the planet having a field day in 10,000 real US home addresses/phone numbers/email contacts which will be all in one convenient place; rendering those points of contact useless.

I know I personally would not like this to happen to me and I would be knocking on some ones door if this sort of thing did happen to me asking them to remove my entry.

I'm wondering what others think about this happening and what sort of role model this place is setting to commercial entities who for the most part keep their privacy policies; I could see a infringement court case "But the Treasury can do it, why can't we?"

(More opinions: [url=http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/09/0010200&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=158&tid=99]SlashDot[/url] (Some comments would come under M15+ so read at your own risk.))

[DeadSeraphim]

Showing their details is one of the most idiotic things that can be done. The comments... doesn't really matter, as long as they were kept anonymous, but to give out their details? Ludicrous beyond words. We already have enough trouble with email lists being sold over the net because people can't keep things private, to do this would be the largest violation of privacy available.

[James]

[color=#707875]After reading the actual original CNET article, it seems to me that the number of responses the Treasury Department received was enough that they were not able to edit every single email comment before posting it up.

So there are two points I'd make about that.

Firstly, they're talking about what was in the content of the email. If you are emailing the Government to protest or to make your opinion about a particular proposal known, why would you put your personal details within the body of the email? To me, that comes across as being rather unnecessary.

Secondly, if the Treasury Department decided to wait and edit every single one of these emails, to ensure that nothing personal got through, can you imagine what'd happen? People would start saying things like "Treasury Department withholds thousands of email comments!"

I can definitely imagine SlashDot posting an article with [i]that[/i] headline, if it were the other way around.

Of course, having said all of the above, I don't think it's appropriate for the Government to be publishing personal information -- I'd rather that they delay the process of publishing emailed comments, just so that they can make sure to uphold their original promise.

Regardless, this will be used as further ammunition to attack the Government about privacy issues, conspiracy theories and whatnot. Saying that this was a [i]deliberate[/i] way to "silence" future comments on proposed legislation is absurd. I think it's simply a question of poor judgement on behalf of some stupid public official.[/color]

[Guest cloricus]

I and many others would not even think twice about paying attention to this if they were too not read over the information in the comments; if you put your address in the main body of a letter and you expect some one to sit down out of thousands of others and find it you've got a screw lose.
What [i]is[/i] happening is that the Governmental department is meant to remove all personal information from letters including phone/address/email before this goes to print and since all are entered into a database once it reaches them regardless this means that they have to go to each letter and remove it. Since this is all in place what they are suggesting is that they will not remove the headers and footers that normally contain this sort of data so they can basically just send the information straight to print. So why should 10 thousand people have to suffer and their agreement with the treasury department be crushed just because it has a problem with data entry?

Now for example when I signed up to OtakuBoards I was shown a Privacy statement, I agreed to it and that put me in a contract with OtakuBoards and Adam directly. If he were to break that without abiding by that contract I would sue him, among other things.

So really what is different in this case? [spoiler]Or is it because the word government is in there the word conspiracy is mentioned by some automatically to take its real importance away?[/spoiler]

[quote]I can definitely imagine SlashDot posting an article with that headline, if it were the other way around[/quote]Then you don't know slashdot.[quote]this will be used as further ammunition to attack the Government about privacy issues[/quote]Yeah, those damn hippies attacking Patriot 2 leading to it being dropped in the light of public pressure! What a bad thing to happen![quote]Saying that this was a deliberate way to "silence" future comments on proposed legislation is absurd[/quote]Yes it is absurd, though possible, but it was only a few peoples response, many others had logical reasoning to be annoyed.[quote]I think it's simply a question of poor judgement on behalf of some stupid public official.[/quote]I agree completely and they should fix their practises in light of it.[quote]People would start saying things like "Treasury Department withholds thousands of email comments!"[/quote]Or they would have a public spokesperson come out and say; "comments for this proposal have been forced to be withheld for a short time more because of sheer volume and our privacy agreement to those people and as such our finial decision on this matter will be delayed accordingly.?

[James]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by cloricus [/i]
[B]Now for example when I signed up to OtakuBoards I was shown a Privacy statement, I agreed to it and that put me in a contract with OtakuBoards and Adam directly. If he were to break that without abiding by that contract I would sue him, among other things.[/quote][/b]

[color=#707875]No, it wouldn't put you in a contract with OtakuBoards or with Adam directly.

We provide you with our own guarantee about what kind of information we use and how that is used. However, you are still responsible for your own personal information -- when you register at OtakuBoards, you aren't entering into a contact with anyone. You are ultimately responsible for your own person, but we (and the creator of our software) are responsible for what we do on our end. But you shouldn't mistake us for a corporation that is using your financial information or something like that. It doesn't work that way.[/color][quote][b]

So really what is different in this case? [spoiler]Or is it because the word government is in there the word conspiracy is mentioned by some automatically to take its real importance away?[/quote][/b]

[color=#707875]There really is no difference, in the sense that the people who send email are ultimately making the decision about what information they choose to include within the body of their email.

If you include your personal details in an email, you're taking a certain level of risk.

I'm not saying that the Government is in the right, because they clearly aren't. They should have delayed the publication of comments in order to clear this issue up. I'm just telling you that there is a certain level of common sense and responsibility on the part of the complainant as well as the Government iself.[/color][quote][b]

Then you don't know slashdot.[/quote][/b]

[color=#707875]Really? It's funny that SlashDot is one of your primary sources for information and at the same time, your information is often filtered or framed by some kind of leftist/conspiracy angle. So if SlashDot isn't doing it, then you're doing it yourself. You tell me who I should blame for it. ~_^[/color][quote][b]


Yeah, those damn hippies attacking Patriot 2 leading to it being dropped in the light of public pressure! What a bad thing to happen!Yes it is absurd, though possible, but it was only a few peoples response, many others had logical reasoning to be annoyed.[/quote][/b]

[color=#707875]What the hell are you talking about? Did I ever imply that these people had no right to complain about a Government proposal?

No, I didn't. I'm quite happy for people to make their voices heard on an issue like this. You're now sitting there, quite happily portraying me as saying something that I didn't.

I'm quite sure that if the Government told me that they would not publish my personal details -- and then they did -- that I'd be pretty unhappy about that too. I'm simply pointing out that at the same time, people should be taking responsibility for this sort of thing.

And moreover, it's very easy to jump to the automatic conclusion that there is a Government conspiracy. Oh yes, the Government is so annoyed at people's complaints that they deliberately published all of their personal details, so that spammers would get 'em! How ridiculous. The Government explained [i]why[/i] this happened and I find it to be a completely reasonable explanation.

That doesn't mean that I think they did the [i]right[/i] thing. Of course they didn't. I never suggested that they were doing the right thing, nor did I suggest that people have no right to complain. The Government clearly did the [i]stupid[/i] thing -- but that doesn't make it a deliberate attack on those who complained, as you would apparently like to believe.[/color][quote][b]

I agree completely and they should fix their practises in light of it.Or they would have a public spokesperson come out and say; "comments for this proposal have been forced to be withheld for a short time more because of sheer volume and our privacy agreement to those people and as such our finial decision on this matter will be delayed accordingly.? [/B][/QUOTE]

[color=#707875]Yes, exactly. They should have taken the more conservative/cautious approach, rather than hurriedly throwing the results out there.

However, as I pointed out earlier, you and I both know how that kind of thing would be taken. Again, I can imagine headlines like "Government Refuses to Publish Complaints Over Policy!" or something stupid like that.

Of course, that should not be a reason for the Government to avoid doing the right thing. I'm just saying that in some situations, they'll never win, even if they do the correct thing. [/color]

[Harry]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by cloricus [/i]
[B]
Then you don't know slashdot. [/B][/QUOTE]
I'm trying to stay out of this since I don't feel like getting in an arguement with cloricus that will pretty much be a repitition of his thoughts written 6 different ways, but that is what slashdot is. You should know since you get every single one of your opinions from them.