I have been thinking about privacy a lot due to Mr. John Aravosis' excellent
AmericaBlog and verious discussions on Daily Kos.
So since I have been thinking about this, I thought I would write down some ideas about privacy, what we can expect, what we should be able to expect, and maybe we could get a discussion rolling about that.
I think people are right, Privacy could be one of those giant slaying issues.
More below...
I have been thinking about privacy a lot due to Mr. John Aravosis' excellent
AmericaBlog and verious discussions on Daily Kos.
So since I have been thinking about this, I thought I would write down some ideas about privacy, what we can expect, what we should be able to expect, and maybe we could get a discussion rolling about that.
I think people are right, Privacy could be one of those giant slaying issues.
More below...
1. All of your personal information, name, address, phone number, social security number, etc, are your property. They belong to you.
2. Companies should be required to recognize that your personal information is your private property and if they must keep pieces of that information in order to do business with you, like your phone company, or your utilities, etc, then they are custodians of that information. It is not their property, but rather you have licensed it to them. They should make every effort to protect it.
3. Companies should not be allowed to share your private information with third parties or other companies without your express permission in writing. Companies may not require any sort of waiver of this right as a term of service.
4. If that won't work, instead of that shitty law Congress made a while back requiring you to opt out of companies disclosing and using your personal information, the law needs to be fixed so you should opt in.
5. Companies should face sanctions including heavy fines for the loss of your personal data.
6. Individuals who take your personal data off company property, like on a laptop to take it home, should face heavy fines or possibly even criminal penalties.
7. All companies should be required to notify customers immediately of the loss of their private data.
8. Your credit report and credit rating should also be your own private property. You should have complete authority to freeze these at your discretion in the event of any sort of privacy infringement. You should not have to provide proof of this sort of thing immediately.
9. The company that loses your information should also be responsible for any and all costs you incur trying to clean up their mess. Companies may not require you to waive this as a term of service.
10. Individuals trafficking in stolen or unauthorized private information should be treated as any other sort of thief, criminal and civil penaltes.
11. There should be some sort of mandatory training required for any employee of any company that has access to private information. This should be a standard and companies should be certified just like HIPAA.
Sorry these are just some thoughts I have had, kind of a rough sketch. I know this isn't even close to the way things are right now, I am pie in the sky hopeful with all this, but I think it is an important discussion to have and I would like to continue having it over the next several weeks.
My ultimate goal here would be to come up with some action items and goals that many of us could agree on and work toward.
