ACLU defends personal-info privacy

[Margaret Tarbet <tarbet@swaa.com>]

See:  http://www.aclu.org/privacy/indexs.html

Your right to privacy and that of all citizens is under
unprecedented assault ...

. . . from wholesale attacks from overly zealous law enforcement
officials determined to have access to telephone conversation,
e-mail or other electronic communication you transmit and . . .

 . . . from private sector interests that want access to intimate
information about you, including your medical records, either for
commercial purposes, or to challenge your insurance eligibility or
employment suitability. 

For the past several years the ACLU has been defending our most
fundamental right to privacy. But, if we are to succeed in stopping
the assault on our privacy rights, we need the involvement of
ordinary citizens. 

That is why the ACLU has launched our Defend Your Data Campaign.
This special web-based campaign on privacy rights is designed to
alert citizens to the fact that the government and the private
sector are in the process of carrying out the most frightening and
pervasive invasion of personal privacy in our nation's history. 

And what they do know, can indeed hurt you. Consider the following
examples: 

In Maryland, a banker accessed medical records to find people
diagnosed with cancer. Once he identified them, the bank called in
their loans.

According to a recent University of Illinois survey, 35 percent of
Fortune 500 companies check medical records before they hire or
promote.

A 1997 survey by the American Management Association found that as
many as 10 percent of 6,000 companies used genetic testing for
employment purposes. And the Council for Responsible Genetics, an
advocacy group in Massachusetts, has documented hundreds of cases in
which healthy people have been denied insurance or a job based on
genetic "predictions."