Personal security

The always excellent Stark County Law Library Blog has an excellent post up today covering the ChoicePoint/identity theft issue, noting that scrutiny will likely also fall on Westlaw Accurint and LexisNexis. As someone who both fears the damage that identity theft can inflict on me, and uses ChoicePoint on a regular basis to track down people in my business, these developments have left me divided.

Link.

I did not like ChoicePoints’ reaction to the scandal, basically saying they would solve the problem by cutting off access to “small businesses,” unless a big business would vouch for them. I guess I would be considered a “small business,” whereas large firms would not.

With concerns about electronic security, privacy protection, and now terrorism, the basic framework of our civil life is being altered, bit by bit. The Bill of Rights, the document that sets out the rights we enjoy as citizens in this Country, is undergoing changes, not in the text, but in interpretation.

These changes can be seen in the court battle between the government, airlines and software millionaire John Gilmore about Gilmore’s refusal to display a government issued ID to board an airplane (a fight over the application of a rule that is so secret, Gilmore’s attorneys have been denied access to. Link via BoingBoing.

You can also note the trend in new laws, like Indiana’s House Bill 1439, which would require a voter to present a government ID to vote. Link, discussed here by Doug Masson.

I believe we are coming to a point in our society where we will have multiple levels of citizenship: A basic “I live here so I’m a citizen” level, a “certified citizen” who has been checked out and credentialed and can do things like rent a car, get on an airplane, vote, enter public buildings, etc, and maybe even a “super certified citizen” who is permitted to do things like access public information from information vendors and the government.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 12:06 pm and is filed under Techno Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.