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From: lamy@utegc.UUCP
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: University-wide Finger
Message-ID: <8707241453.AA03690@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Date: Fri, 24-Jul-87 10:53:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: ephemera.8707241453.AA03690
Posted: Fri Jul 24 10:53:28 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Jul-87 12:06:44 EDT
References: <3601@watvlsi.waterloo.edu> <1473@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <1051@water.waterloo.edu>
Distribution: can
Organization: University of Toronto, AI group
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In article <9903@orchid.waterloo.edu> rbutterworth@orchid.waterloo.edu (Ray Butterworth) writes:
>I have never understood why so many Canadians are paranoid about
>identity numbers.  I would find life much simpler if my SIN, my
>[...]
>It would make things a lot easier for everyone (except for
>illegal immigrants, welfare fakes, tax evaders, library book
>thiefs, wanted criminals, etc.).

Correlation of huge databases would be greatly facilitated by unique IDs.
This raises interesting questions wrt the presumption of innocence that
underlies our legal system.  While it is easy to see why correlating
people who get UI with people who are dead and people with jobs is probably
a valid use, there are more dangerous situations.  For example, a recent
case involved a US government agency that was correlating phone records with
a list of prominent Washington reporters, in an effort to stop unwanted leaks
(source: Time magazine, issue on the 200th birthday of the American
Constitution).

But the battle may already be lost.  The junk mail I get is so nicely targeted
that I sometimes feel there is not too much an ad agency does not know
about me (age, sex, profession, money I made, when I last changed my car,
marital status, what kind of house, what kind of neighbourhood, and so on).

Jean-Francois Lamy                      lamy@ai.toronto.edu (CSnet,UUCP,Bitnet)
AI Group, Dept of Computer Science      lamy@ai.toronto.cdn (EAN X.400)
University of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4   {seismo,watmath}!ai.toronto.edu!lamy