ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) (04/12/91)
There is a front-page article in Thursday's (April 11) New York Times about privacy laws in Europe. A few highlights: The EEC is attempting to create a unified privacy law. The article described the current proposal, although it's not clear how close it will be to what will actually be adopted. In general, personal information could only be used for specifically limited purposes. Organizations would be allowed to sell mailing lists with permission of the people on them, but it was unclear whether prior permission was required or whether it sufficed to inform people of what was happening and give them a chance to opt out. Many businesses oppose the law; a couple of supporters were quoted as saying that the businesses didn't really understand it yet, and were fighting against a straw man. Taking personal information to a country with weaker privacy laws (like, say, the U.S.A.) would be prohibited. This could cause problems for some multi-nationals which wanted to, for example, centralize payroll; it might be illegal for a U.S. based company to take personal information about European employees into the U.S. -- Ian Taylor ian@airs.com uunet!airs!ian First person to identify this quote wins a free e-mail message: ``But this machine chews all kinds of paper into a thick porridge that no chemist in the world, however skilled a criminal he may be, can read.''