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Legislature gets privacy rulesSchneider backs snooping curbsBy Tim KelleyWisconsin State JournalThe Legislature’s leading privacy advocate Thursday unveiled sweeping legislation that he said would help protect state residents from increasing corporate and government snooping into their private lives.The series of measures to be proposed by Hep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wisconsin Rapids, would limit access to and use of certain types of computerized information about state residents.“New and emerging technologies ... constitute the most insidious threat against individual liberty in the history of our nation,” Schneider said.Among other things, Schneider’s bill would generally limit access to records containing anyone’s Social Security number and study ways to limit use of the number to identify individuals.The bill also would outlaw the sale and marketing of government lists containing personal information while expanding public access to electronically stored governmentrecords.Government officials who violate some of the existing and proposed privacy measures could be sent to prison for up to five years.Schneider, chairman of the Assembly Trade, Science and Technology Committee, said current open records and information policy laws need to be updated to regulate vast, sophisticated computer data storage and transfer systems.“These technologies are expanding at such a rate as to make present privacy safeguards as obsolete as the typewriter and the horse and buggy,” Schneider said. “These technologies are greatly increasing the power of government and the private sector and are overwhelming the law.”Schneider, sensitive to press criticism of his past privacy advocacy, said his new effort was not meant to conceal public information or undermine the state’s open-records law.“I am not for closed government,” Schneider said. “I have no desire to keepfrom the people or press those aspects of government activity which they have a right and responsibility to know about.... I am not a Luddite.”Some of the other measures proposed by Schneider would:■ Keep secret from the public all records containing the addresses and telephone numbers of law enforcement, jail and prison workers.■ Allow parents to prevent schools from disclosing their children’s attendance records, sports involvement and basic identifying information such as name and birth-date.■ Prohibit all types of genetic testing by insurers who may use the tests to determine a person’s health status and possibly deny that person’s insurance application.■ Limit disclosure of health records to credit bureaus that may sell the information to insurers.■ Prohibit electronic monitoring and other types of surveillance of state employees by government in most cases.■ Outlaw use of photo-radar speed detection by law enforcement. Technology exists to photograph speeding drivers, identify them through their license plates, and send them a ticket in the mail.■ Prohibit disclosure of unpublished telephone numbers through the use of Caller ID, a service that identifies the source of incoming calls.■ Prohibit transportation officials from disclosing personal information contained in vehicle title and registration records.■ Create penalties on people who use information from state records to stalk or harass others.The legislation would launch several studies that could result in additional changes in public-record laws. Proposed studies would:■ Consider restricting use of electronic eavesdropping equipment that allows people to listen to and record conversations within buildings.■ Determine the feasibility of allowing public access to records detailing prisoners’ court-ordered treatment.■ Examine the threat to personal privacy posed by the widespread state and local government use of residents’ social security numbers on tax forms and other documents.■ Consider possible limits on disclosure of medical information in court trials and other actions.■ Direct the Public Service Commission to study the electronic eavesdropping of conversations conducted over cordless and cellular telephones.
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