When I saw Mike Godwin's op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, I recognized his name from CPSR and RISKS. And reading the piece reminded me of a handout I used to give my students. I sent this letter (not published):
Mike Godwin urges a tech code of ethics concerning censorship and privacy policies. The Code of Fair Information Practices would be an excellent start on the privacy part. Proposed in 1973 (!), it has five principles:
- There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very existence is secret.
- There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the person is in a record and how it is used.
- There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for other purposes without the person's consent.
- There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of identifiable information about the person.
- Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data.
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