🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <NEWTNews.26706.791829615.privacy@interramp.com>,
privacy@interramp.com wrote:
> Not only is providing false information a "bad idea," since it is illegal
> ...it is also a last ditch resort that consumers should not have to face.
> 
> It's easy to lie and give out fake names, addresses, telephone numbers, etc. 
> But this is not the "way it should be".... 
> 
> Instead, the best solution (as far as I am concerned) is to create laws and 
> grassroot efforts to stop such requests for personal information as a 
> condition of sale....Do you have suggestions for a "Privacy Bill of Rights?" 


Has intrusion grown that bad, that unrelenting, that inevitable, that we are 
now forced to consider lying simply to protect our privacy?  
	In an earlier time, when a free people was faced with the threat of 
oppression from their own government, they took drastic steps to establish 
a social environment, a new form of government, that would protect and defend 
their basic rights.  Now we are again faced with a threat of oppression, not 
only from our own government but also from commercial interests taking 
advantage of the vacuum in our protections.  
	The best solution as far as *everyone* is concerned would be the 
establishment of a national agency to protect privacy as an essential 
concomitant to liberty.  Consider, for example: 
 
	When the nation wanted independent, effective protection for 
	the nation's wealth, it established the Federal Reserve Bank.  

	Long before the Federal government took on its greatly 
	expanded (if unworkable) role as savior of all during the 
	Depression, plain people had already developed effecacious 
	national agencies to protect themselves from dangerous uses 
	of electricity (Underwriters' Laboratories) and to guarantee 
	themselves the quality of medicines (the U.S. Pharmocopeia).  


The Declaration of Independence says that every person is "endowed 
with...the right to...liberty."  The Constitution of the U.S. is explicitly 
intended to "secure the blessings of liberty" for us all.  In this age of 
ever more capable intrusion into our most intimate lives, primarily through 
technological advances, surely what we need now--urgently--is to establish 
as independent, as robust, and as durable as possible an entity that can 
protect our most basic liberty--the right to be left alone. 
	Imperfect, incomplete, mutable laws alone will never afford the 
kind and level of protective mechanisms that a true guarantee of privacy 
requires.  Privacy is too important to be left to the routine ministrations 
of a government that has become almost by definition (surely as demonstrated 
by its recent failures) a primary threat to it.  We desparately need a 
"national privacy shield" more independent, more durable, and more effective 
than any agency ever before established.