On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:56:51 EST Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said:
>I don't know about Europe, but I've never heard of any law in the US
>that would prevent an organization from forcing its employees to receive
>certain email messages.
Just to clarify, this wouldn't be a problem in Europe. However we do have
laws to protect people from misuse of computer technology. As computers
started to appear, companies (and governments) discovered that they could
do all sorts of interesting things with them, which were not always
unlawful because it just had not been an issue in the past. Laws were
passed to protect society from this new threat. The laws vary from one
country to another, but for instance, if a company (or government) has a
computer file about you, they are required by law to allow you to examine
this file, and to correct any factual error that you may point out.
Sweden (and I think other Nordic countries) go even further and require
all credit advice firms to send the "victim" a full copy of the report
transmitted to their client, along with the name of the client. This
means that when you apply for a credit card and the credit card company
runs a credit check on you, you get a copy of the information that was
sent to them (and an opportunity to have any factual error corrected),
and you are told who ordered the report. Needless to say, these reports
tend to be accurate and unbiased :-) There are also laws allowing you to
demand anonymity on public databases (disabling CONCEAL on a list with
"Review= Public" could thus be illegal, depending on the circumstances).
There are cases where you can demand to be removed from a database (it is
then usually acceptable to anonymize your entry so that it can be kept
for statistical purposes). For instance, if you decide to cancel your
subscription to a newspaper, you can demand that they stop sending you
reminders or ads about their other publications. I'm pretty sure that
keeping cross-vendor databases of people with their spending habits would
be illegal unless the information is anonymous and thus used only for
statistical purposes. If it's an internal customer database (ie not
shared among vendors), it's probably allowed if you can make a case that
you need this information to service the customer. You won't be surprised
to hear that I get maybe 2-3 pieces of junk mail a week, of which 2 are
from nearby food shops who somehow think I haven't yet noticed that (i)
they are the only 2 groceries in the area and (ii) I need to eat food
every day, not once every other month :-) If we could convince the food
shops that their stupid ads have no impact on where we shop, there would
be virtually no junk mail.
Eric
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