RESTORING SOME SEMBLANCE OF PRIVACY WON'T BE EASY

I have fretted for a long time about the disappearance of individual privacy because of the electronic age. Computers know entirely too much about us.

The privacy issue was refueled in Kootenai County last spring because of some actions by high-profile County Commissioner Ron Rankin.

Here is a brief summary: In May, Kootenai County voters defeated a sales tax increase that would have funded a new jail. Rankin worked hard for the increase and, after its loss, compiled a list of those - and they were a large majority of the registered voters - who didn't go to the polls for the single-measure vote. (Turnout was approximately 12 percent.) He then announced that his door would be closed to those who had not bothered to cast a ballot. That presumably included some of his past supporters.

Furor erupted. Some were angry at what they considered arrogance and some were angry at the perceived violation of their privacy in compiling such a list in the first place. Many people in Idaho are fierce in their solitude and some vowed never again to vote, since they now knew their participation was open to scrutiny.

Apparently, it is not generally known that voting history is a matter of public record.

Politicians for decades have been acquiring the valuable information in voter records. In earlier times, staffers painstakingly pored through lengthy lists, checking, marking and noting. Now computers do the work, infinitely faster. Moreover, computers can merge and measure the data in useful ways, so that professional election personnel can effortlessly find out how often you vote in primary or general elections, school board elections, single-issue ballots and can target their campaign at voters most likely to show up.

The information is all open to the public, and it is certainly no crime to do the research.

Most folks would be surprised to discover, beyond the world of the voting booth, how much information about them is open to those hardy enough to do the research.

Voting records, tax rolls, court proceedings, driving records, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, building permits and inspection reports are a fraction of the information on file, ready to be churned out at the push of a few buttons. And that is just public information. The computers that log your business activity know even more.

On a less sophisticated level, consider what can be known about you by what comes into and goes out of your dwelling. If your mail carrier and your trash hauler ever compared notes, much of what you consider your private business could be out there for the world to see.

Your mail reveals much: your politics, your friends' addresses, your spending patterns, hobbies and passions, and a reasonable guess as to your income. Parts of your identity are delivered to your mail box on a regular basis.

Your trash reveals even more: what you eat, buy, wear and discard, receive as gifts, and throw away. You leave a record of your daily life in your trash can. When does your private detritus become cartage and no longer protected by an expectation of privacy? Court rulings have not been all that clear.

Luckily, our would-be research teams of carriers and haulers are too busy doing their jobs and living their own lives to worry over yours. So for the most part, these aspects of your private life are secure. But thinking about how accessible that glut of information is to someone who has a purpose in looking, coupled with the stunning electronic search engines in the computer world, should motivate us all to think about privacy, what business knows about us and what government knows about us.

Every credit card purchase you make, every stock or bond you buy or sell, every magazine you subscribe to, every survey you answer, all gets recorded in a database somewhere where clever researchers can use the information to sell you more products. Every tax form, traffic ticket, census survey and utility bill add to the wealth of information in government databases.

Every time you are on a cordless or cellular phone, you open your conversations up to the silent monitoring of the curious with sophisticated receivers. And faxes can be tapped the way telephone calls can be.

You don't have to be a fanatic of the far right to see that we aren't left with much privacy. And you don't need a crystal ball to see the situation won't get better without our complaining to our legislators.

So the uproar over Rankin's simple research into a public record last May could be useful if it leads people to realize how severely under siege their private lives are.

It will take more than a few paper shredders in homes to restore a sense of security in our privacy. It will take laws, regulations, better layers of security and efficient watchdogging by all of us. It will take committed activism.

Copyright 1999 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.