Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York, NY)
March 4, 1999, Thursday, ALL EDITIONS
SECTION: VIEWPOINTS; Page A47
LENGTH: 807 words
HEADLINE:
THE PRIVATE DOMAIN / YOU CAN'T JUST CAN'T BE TOTALLY PRIVATE
BYLINE: By Edward J. Spar. Edward J. Spar is executive
director of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal
Statistics.
BODY:
IN 1942, with
World War II just underway in the United States, there was near-hysteria about
Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast, founded on the entirely mistaken
suspicion that these immigrants would lend aid and comfort to our wartime enemy.
At the height of the panic, the secretary of war is believed to have
requested that the Census Bureau supply the names, addresses and ages of all
persons of Japanese extraction living out West. In spite of the national
emergency, the bureau held to the law calling for the strict confidentiality of
individual recrods and refused to release the information.
Likewise, in
1947, in the early stirrings of the Cold War anxiety over Communisty
infiltration and sabotage, the Census Bureau refused to turn over its records to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This strict adherence to the law is still
with us. Federal statistical agencies are only too aware of the possibilities of
an individual's personal data being released into the brave new world of
cyberspace. Life has gotten much more complicated since the days when the
government had very little information about you. Once in 10 years you filled
out a census form and, assuming you were so inclined, you filled our your
federal tax form each year.
Now, over and above these records, the
government has, among the vast files maintained by the federal bureaucracy,
Medicare information, birth and death data from the states, Social Security
information, food stamp and other data about people in poverty.
Fortunately, the concept of strict confidentiality is still the law
across all of the federal agencies that collect this information. And this law
is continually reinforced by government regulations. Also, Congress keeps a very
close watch on what the federal agencies collect and what they do with the data.
Does this mean we should just forget about the issue? Hardly. As we
enter the next century, the issue is as alive as ever, and has taken a new
twist, namely data "linkage." Up until recently, there really was no scientific
way of matching and combining the more personal and potentially compromising
information gathered in what is known in Washington as "administrative records."
The computing power wasn't there, and our decentralized federal statistical
system virtually ensured that there was enough chaos built in so that your
records would not see the light of day.
But computing power is no longer
an issue. Linking your information into one central data bank might be difficult
but it's probably something that could be done. The federal government is all
too aware of this and is taking steps to ensure that even if any linking were
allowed, the information could not be used to track you down, and could only be
used in the aggregate for statistical purposes. Individual information would
never be disclosed.
Believe it or not, new strict orders on
confidentiality have been reissued in just the last two years, and additional
legislation aimed at personal data protection is wending through Congress. And
the government has carefully built in internal checks and balance sto prevent
the unauthorized circulation of personal information. There are, in other words,
watch dogs watching the watch dogs.
There is, however, a curious
disconnect in the way we think about safeguarding personal information. On the
one hand, we have our naturally healthy distrust of big government. But we tell
the manufacturer of the hair blower we just bought just about everything about
us, down to our favorite reading matter and our beauty marks.
Each year
we mail millions of cards that look like, feel like, but are not warrantee cards
to some P.O. box in Boulder, Colo. The data, in turn, are sold to manufacturers
who want to sell you the next version of the hair blower. This information is
linked to all the other information you've supplied to magazines, answers to
questions over the phone and on and on. And you wonder why a direct mail company
sends you exactly the kind of catalogue that will entice you? With the new
commercial growth of the Internet, your opportunity to divulge even more, even
faster, is limitless. Compared to what the government knows, these files could
tell your life history.
In both the public domain of government and the
less-regulated private sector the issue is still one of vigilance. Federal
agencies and the private sector fully understand the need to keep a hands off
relationship when it comes to sharing personal information. Yet with the
explosion of new infomration technologies, and the accompanying fear of
accidental releases of data in the "real time" world of the Internet, this issue
will certainly be one of the hot buttons of the next decade. Should you be
concerned? Absolutely. Should you take anything for granted? Absolutely not.
GRAPHIC: Photo - Edward J. Spar
LOAD-DATE: March 13, 1999 
