[wordup] one more for the corporations ... yay ...

[Adam Shand]

well i'm sad to say july 1st drives one more stake into the heart of
individual privacy in the usa.  i haven't verified this, but for once i'm
inclined to believe /.,  spank me if i'm mis-informed.

while you're getting bent over a coffer full of someone elses money why
don't you go log into adbusters and celebrate the 4th of july with some
anti-corporation style by flying the coporate flag of america?

	http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/july4/

URL: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/29/1351258&mode=flat
More: http://www.privacyrightsnow.com/

"Opt-Out" Of Financial Data Sharing
Posted by michael on Friday June 29, @07:28AM
from the laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank dept.

David Carver writes: "I heard about this on a local news station this
morning: The Financial Modernization Act, passed in 1999, allows financial
institutions to share your personal financial information to other
institutions without your explicit permission. They have been required by
law to inform you of your rights by July 1st. The good news is that you
can choose to opt out of this, but you must notify, in writing, any bank,
credit card company, etc. with which you have an account. A sample opt-out
letter, courtesy of Ralph Nader, is available at privacyrightsnow.com."

michael: If you check around there have been a lot of news stories written
about this law. Until this law was passed, there were laws in place that
separated banks from the insurance and securities industries. That is,
your bank couldn't also be your stock broker or your insurance company.
The main law creating this situation was called the Glass-Steagall Act,
and was passed in 1933 right in the middle of the Great Depression.
Speculation in the stock market by banks was a major cause of the stock
market crash of 1929, and the goal of the law was to prevent another such
crash. Scores of banks failed when their stock investments turned sour at
the same time as depositors wanted their money out. When these three
industries are combined into single corporate entities, society is putting
all of its financial eggs into one basket - a crashing stock market leads
to rising insurance claims and makes the bank insolvent precisely at the
time that it needs to have lots of cash on hand. We as a society have
learned this lesson, and due to this law, sometime in the future we will
learn it again.

Fast-forward to the present. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 got rid of
most of those restrictions, freeing banks and securities firms and
insurance firms to consolidate. Gramm, Leach and Bliley are three
Republican Congressmen who have all received huge bribes (sometimes called
campaign contributions) from the banking industry. Essentially, like the
1996 telecommunications law which paved the way for the return of Ma Bell
(the seven Baby Bells have merged into four, while stifling all possible
competition in any way possible), this law will eventually result in a
financial services industry dominated by a very few mega-institutions. The
law was written to override not only the old Federal law, but also state
laws which would have prohibited these mergers.  It was strongly supported
by the Republicans and lightly supported by the Democrats, after massive
lobbying from the banking and financial industries. The securities firms
and insurance firms loved this, because "having a lot of money in your
bank account" is a good indicator that you'd be willing to invest in the
stock market, and now they can simply purchase the data from your bank, or
better yet, merge with it, to get access. The banks loved it because
insurance and securities represented new revenue streams that were
previously untapped. Additionally, it allows all sorts of conflicts of
interest - advising customers to buy stock in company A while the bank
itself is selling it, etc. etc.

Anyway, one of the weak additions to the bill insisted on by Clinton were
the provisions affecting privacy. In a nutshell:

Banks can share any and all information about your financial doings with
any corporation that they have a business relationship with or are
otherwise associated with. They can sell anything they know about you -
Social Security numbers, account numbers, who you write checks to, what
you buy with your credit card, etc. A Washington Post column sums it up
nicely.  You can't opt-out of that.  Banks can also share any and all
information about your financial doings with anyone else.  You can opt-out
of that.  But the business relationship mentioned at the start could be
something like "We are in business with company X for the purpose of
selling your financial information", so the exception totally swallows the
rule.  Ha-ha, you lose.

So now the deadline is approaching, and lots of financial institutions are
sending out privacy notices as required by law. Some small percent of
institutions are sending out opt-out notifications, allowing you to
"opt-out". I believe that most institutions are not sending opt-out
notices, because frankly, they don't need to - any use of your financial
data can be covered under the no-opt-out-required if the bank sets it up
properly. None of the several institutions I do business with provided me
with any opportunity to opt-out, although all warned me that they would
sell my financial information. Here's a direct quote from one:

"We do not share any personal information about you or our former members
with third parties except as permitted or required by law, and as
necessary for business purposes."

So they share my information "as permitted by law", for any business
purpose. Translation: they promise not to violate the law, and to attempt
to make money. Wow, what an incredible commitment to privacy. Of course,
you might not get to this sentence if you only read the beginning of the
notice, which starts out "[Bank] is committed to protecting the privacy of
your personal information."

My guess is that very few of these notices contain any meaningful
commitment to privacy. Read them carefully. If you get an opt-out notice,
do it - it won't have any effect on what actually happens to information
about your bank account, credit history, credit card purchases, etc., but
the industry is using the low return rate of opt-out notices as a
statement that customers don't care about privacy (when in fact, most
people probably just throw away these tiny-print legalese forms). I don't
really have any other advice - I very much doubt that you'll be able to
locate any banking institution that would be reasonably convenient for you
to deal with that will in any way respect your privacy.