On Mon, 17 Feb 2003, Andreas Heldal-Lund - www.xenu.net wrote:

> Select "Free Public Records", incredible what you can search
> on in US:
>
> http://www.search4crime.com/
>
> Do you have any privacy rights in US at all. Scary.

No, there is no right to privacy in the USA. The scary thing about it is that everyone assumes there is. Look in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights. There is no right to privacy. This oddity in the American legal system was exploited back in the 1950s, during the 'Red Scare', when private citizens were spied upon by the police. As a result of excesses by the police and FBI, laws were passed, supposedly to protect privacy.

What the laws actually did was restrict the ways in which it was legal to collect personal information on private citizens. In reality, it just made spying get more sophisticated.

Just this morning I read about a law like that in LA they had passed to prevent police from spying on people. The law said the police aren't allowed to spy on you if there is no evidence that a crime has been committed. But it is legal for private investigators to spy on you. Get it? Now, to catch those damned elusive terrorists, they want to modify or repeal these laws which supposedly (haha) protect your privacy.

Another law is the 1974 Privacy Act. It said that companies couldn't take your personal information and spread it around or sell it -- without your advance written permission. All they had to do to get around that was to have you sign a blanket release statement in advance. It's one of those forms you never read whenever you signed up for something. I think eventually it was recognized as a joke, and they stopped doing it. In any case I haven't heard the words "1974 Privacy Act" for quite some time.

Europeans have a law that says its illegal to possess personal, identifying information on its citizens, the way the Gestapo used to do, for instance. So Europeans are rather shocked at the offhand manner in which Americans casually accept their 1984 destiny.

Joe Cisar http://cisar.org The Press and Public Relations Policies of Layfayette Ronald Hubbard

http://www.xenu.net/archive/thesis/cisar-home.html

To all those on ARS who think that the wolf always comes to the door wearing the same disguise, I say go read some history ... Bob Minton

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