CFP - Second day
posted by:Veronica Pinero // 03:00 PM // April 14, 2005 // Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference (CFP)
An amazing debate is going on! Today is the second day of the CPF conference, and the panel, which is moderated by Marcia Hofmann (EPIC), is to address the problems arising by Data Mining & Public Records.
The dynamic of this panel is that the presenters, Doug Klunder (ACLU-WA Privacy Project), Daniel Solove (George Washington University Law School), and Cindy Southworth (Safety Net: the National Safe & Strategic Technology Project at the National Network to End Domestic Violence), are to discuss audience’s solutions to two problems put to the audience before the panel started. The problems and the questions are the following:
Problem 1 – Public Records
Problem: a state is planning to put its public records online and make available over the Internet its public records. The state is working on a policy about disclosing the following information about individuals: (A) home address; (B) phone numbers; and (C) Social Security Number.
Questions:
1. To what extent should each type of information be disclosed?
2. At one extreme, should each piece of information be redacted entirely from any public documents and never disclosed under any circumstances?
3. At the other extreme, should each piece of information be fully disclosed without limitation?
4. Are there any workable compromises between these two extremes?
Problem 2 – Background checks
Problem: State X currently provides for the disclosure of conviction records from a single agency, which maintains a centralized database. This database is updated to remove records when a conviction is reversed on appeal, vacated, pardoned, etc. A data broker proposes to provide a “full” background check service by creating its own database that includes every arrest and criminal proceeding which will be retained forever in the database.
Question: Should limits (and if so what limits) be placed on the agencies releasing information, on the data broker, on the entities obtaining background checks from the broker, or on some combination?
What is your own position with regard to this? I have not thought very much about the first problem, but with regard to the second, I have some concerns:
First of all, what is the purpose of a criminal conviction? Or, what is the purpose of sentencing? If we are to think about this, we will realize that among others, the purpose of sentencing is rehabilitation and reintegration. How are we going to achieve such a purpose by implementing (or allowing to implement) these sorts of intrusive practices?
Second, there is an assumption: the information provided by State X is not shared with other states; it is “static information”. What happens if this information is shared with other countries, and therefore, subjected to foreign jurisdiction (“dynamic information”)? How do we assure that all criminal information that has being modified (for instance, reversed convictions on appeal, granted pardons, etc.) is actually modified by the foreign jurisdiction that got the information?
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