🚀 go-pugleaf

In discussing Private Agreements to Restrict Information, Guthery at
asc.sdr.slb.com writes:

   All information about Mr. Hanly's person is his property and he can
   do with it as he pleases....

I'm not a lawyer, but I write a lot on privacy and technology issues.
Although this position seems to be clearly desirable to me, it is NOT
the law.

Information has occasionally been treated as intangible property, but
you have no property interests whatsoever in information about yourself.
If someone who has information about you decides to sell it or give it
away, you have absolutely nothing to say about it.   The only exceptions
to this are explicit prohibitions in contracts you enter into and the
few laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act or libel law that proscribe
activity around particular uses of information.   If the phone company
wants to sell your long distance records to someone, they can.  If your
employer wants to disclose your income, he can.  If your bank or creditors
wants to sell your account information they can.   Recordkeepers may
even be forced to keep information about you that they do not want to,
and then forced to turn it over to the government on demand.  There is
no legislative or constitutional prohibition on disclosing or selling
information about individuals.  This was annunciated quite clearly in
the US Supreme court's single most important case of the information
age, California Banker's Association v. Schultz (416 US 21, 39 L Ed 2nd 812,
94 S Ct 1494, decided April 1974).   I think it is worth describing
this case in some detail because it is not well known and its implications
are so important:

 The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970... authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury
 to prescribe by regulation certain bank recordkeeping and reporting
 requirements....  The Act is designed to obtain financial information
 having a 'high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax or regulatory
 investigations or proceedings.'  Title I of the Act requires financial
 institutions to maintain records of their customers' identities, to
 make microfilm copies of checks and similar instruments, and to keep
 records of certain other items.  Title II of the act requires the
 reporting to the Federal Government of certain foreign and domestic
 financial transactions.... Suits were brought by various plantiffs
 challenging the constitutionality of the Act, principly on the ground
 that it violated the Fourth Amendment, because when the bank makes and
 keeps records under compulsion of the Secretary's regulations it acts
 as a Government agent and thereby engages in the seizure of its customers'
 records.... [The ACLU, a plantiff, also attacked] on Fifth Amendment
 grounds, as violating the priviledge against self-incrimination....

 [The Supreme Court, in a decision authored by Rehnquist, held:] There
 is a sufficient nexus between the evil Congress sought to address and
 the recordkeeping procedure to meet the requirements of the Due Process
 Clause of the Fifth Amendment...  The regulations for the reporting
 by financial institutions of domestic financial transactions are
 reasonable and abridge no Fourth Amendment rights of such institutions,
 which are themselves parties to the transactions involved, since neither
 `incorporated nor unincorporated associations [have] an unqualified
 right to conduct their affairs in secret.'...  The depositor plantiffs...
 lack standing to challenge the domestic reporting regulations.  It is
 therefore unnecessary to consider contentions made by the bank and
 depositor plantiffs that the regulations are constitutionally defective
 because they do not require the financial institution to notify the
 customer that a report will be filed....  The bank plantiffs cannot
 vicariously assert Fifth Amendment claims on behalf of their depositors
 under the circumstances present here, since the depositors cannot assert
 those claims themselves....  [Quoting a previous tax case:] 'It is
 difficult to see how the summoning of a third party or the records of
 a third party can violate the rights of the taxpayer, even if criminal
 prosecution is contemplated or in progress.'

One very important thing to note here is that the depositors (the people
about whom the information is kept) DO NOT EVEN HAVE STANDING.  That
means they cannot bring action in a court of law about this issue.  The
disposition of third party records about you is none of your business.
You have NO property right in information that others have about you.
Sorry.

                                       Larry Hunter