subject: Our Privacy Is Defensless Against Constant Consumer Profiling [print this page] An individual's privacy, as far as being identified as part of and sorted into different categories, is very poorly protected world wide according to current research. Many laws do exist to protect an individual from invasion of their personal privacy.
This is illustrated on a regular basis by the many libel and slander cases celebrities file against newspapers, "gossip programs", and others who have intruded into their private lives.
It is common knowledge that a person has the right to protect their home from intrusion by shooting the invader. Currently there are no laws on the books to protect against invading an individual's privacy by profiling.
Needless to say, filing a lawsuit against a computer database for invading someone's privacy would be a bit tough to enforce since modern day invasions of confidentiality is made up of fragments of information.
Suing a magazine company for including one's name on a list of names they sell to, a club that publishes their membership roster, or a church for showing a list of donors is unthinkable, however these and many other places are sources of personal information. These lists are accumulated and sold, for a tidy sum, through businesses such as telephone-searching.info/239/325/, who's occupation is to collect this material from various available databases.
Most people assume that privacy is a fundamental and granted human right, as well as essential in an established and properly functioning society. If privacy is identified by extension to protection from profiling, the question becomes, "If these particular fundamental human rights were established, who would enforce them?" The answer is, the federal government.
The same government that has already created laws like the Patriot Act. There is a delightful irony here as protecting the individual's right to privacy would then increase government surveillance.
The United Nations has a Declaration of Human Rights. In general it states that everyone has a right to his own opinion and expression, to hold opinions, without interference, and to exchange information and ideas through any media. It would appear that the "exchange information and ideas through any media" opens the door for accumulating database information.
