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> January 28, 2000:
Hour Two: Privacy in an Information World
They know where you live. In fact, depending on how many databases THEY have access to, they may also know your shoe size, your credit rating, the fact that you prefer cheddar cheese to mozzarella, and about that pesky rash on your left ankle. As companies merge and combine databases, and as the amount of online information increases, is there anything that can't become public knowledge for the right price?
In recent months, several notable privacy cases have made the news. The makers of the popular RealAudio software admitted that their "RealJukebox" CD player secretly sent information on users' listening habits back to the company. (A revised version of the software that doesn't do this has now been released.) The online advertising company DoubleClick admitted that now that they have combined their databases with those of a company called Abacus Direct, they can track and identify visitors to any of the over 10,000 web sites that display DoubleClick ads. Intel got into hot water over building a unique identification number into its Pentium III chips. And a market research firm revealed that they have the ability to tell what radio stations people in cars are listening to as they drive by a monitoring point.
Where do privacy rights begin and end in the online world? And with privacy becoming a growing concern among many online users, will more major companies promise not to share personal data with other companies, as the financial company Chase Manhattan did this week? Join Ira and guests on this hour of Science Friday to talk about the topic, and feel free to call in. We promise that we won't use caller ID on you.
Guests:
Simson Garfinkel
Author, "Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century," O'Reilly, 2000.
Columnist, Boston Globe
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Marc Rotenberg
Author, "The Privacy Law Sourcebook 1999: United States Law, International Law, and Recent Developments"
Director, Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC)
Professor, Georgetown University Law Center
Washington, DC
Books/Articles Discussed:
Related Links:
Database Nation
Electronic Privacy Information Center
Remove your DoubleClick cookie with this link
Junkbusters Home Page
The Privacy Page
Anonymizer
Privacy.net
Coalition against Unsolicited Commercial Email
Center for Democracy and Technology
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- This segment produced by:
Annette Heist
Web producer:
Charles Bergquist |