NYT: Some Sympathy for Paris Hilton

The most recent Sunday New York Times has an article on the past week in privacy. Both the Paris Hilton and ChoicePoint incidents are discussed. The Times also quotes Bruce Schneier, the author of Schneier on Security.

The New York Times > Week in Review > Some Sympathy for Paris Hilton:

"...But the implications of the problem at ChoicePoint are enormous, said Daniel J. Solove, an associate professor of law at George Washington University and author of 'The Digital Person: Technology And Privacy in The Information Age.' The company, he noted, has collected information on practically every adult American, and 'these are dossiers that J. Edgar Hoover would be envious of.' Government has looked into ways to mine commercial data to detect patterns of suspicious activity, he noted, and it will continue to do so. But who watches the watchers? Lawmakers like Senators Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California are calling for tighter regulation of data brokers. That would be a good idea, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. 'It's a big, largely unregulated industry that doesn't bear consequences when things go wrong.' Even those who pursue fame, he noted, deserve a measure of privacy...."