Common Law Protection of Individuals' Rights in Personal Information
![handle is hein.journals/flr65 and id is 969 raw text is: NOTES
COMMON LAW PROTECTION OF INDIVIDUALS' RIGHTS
IN PERSONAL INFORMATION
William J. Fenrich
INTRODUCrlON
As you live your life you leave an explicit and revealing trail of
electronic footprints.' Simply by being born;2 getting married;3 having
a child;4 or dying;5 purchasing something with a check or a credit
card;6 subscribing to a magazine;7 calling an 800 or 900 number.' using
1. See Joel R. Reidenberg, Setting Standards for Fair Information Practice in the
U.S. Private Sector, 80 Iowa L. Rev. 497, 517 (1995) [hereinafter Reidenberg, Setting
Standards] (describing how the direct marketing industry collects discrete bits of per-
sonal information from many sources); Michael W. Miller, Hot Lists: Data Mills
Delve Deep to Find Information About U.S. Consumers: Folks Inadvertently Supply It
by Buying Cars, Mailing Coupons, Moving Dying, Wall St. J., Mar. 14, 1991, at Al
(You go through life dropping little bits of data about yourself everywhere.... Most
people don't know that there are big vacuum cleaners sucking it up. (quoting privacy
advocate Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Tunes, a Washington, D.C., monthly));
Mary Zahn & Eldon Knoche, Electronic Footprints: Yours Are a Lot Easier to Track
Than You May Think, Milwaukee J. Sentinel, Jan. 16, 1995, at 1A. Zahn and Knoche
describe the results of their findings as follows:
Write a check and somewhere a computer may log in your name. Buy an
expensive dinner with a credit card and a databank may register you as an
upscale consumer. Apply for a driver's license and anyone with a few bucks
can know your age and address. Send for a video and someone will know
your taste in movies. Use a discount card at a supermarket and the can of
tuna fish you bought leaves an electronic fingerprint. Even breathing can be
a spectator sport for your medical records may end up in a Boston informa-
tion bank. As you are born, go to school, get a job, have a family, raise your
kids, retire and die, nearly everywhere you go and everything you do leaves
computer footprints behind. And in some cases, governmental agencies.
which you probably thought would be sympathetic to protecting your pri-
vacy, work hand in hand with these merchants by making available to them
intimate facts about your life. And it's all legal.
Id.
2. Zahn & Knoche, supra note 1, at 1A.
3. Miller, supra note 1, at A8.
4. See id. (noting marketing efforts targeted at women intending to have chil-
dren); R.J. Ignelzi, Mail and Telejunk: U.S. Marketers Have Your Number: Your Age
and Shoe Size, Too, San Diego Union-Trib., July 4, 1995, at El.
5. See Miller, supra note 1, at A8 (noting statement by president of marketing
firm that collects information on recent deaths, who stated that fd]eath has always
been a negative life style change nobody thought could be sold, but I differ... I think
it's a very good market).
6. Zahn & Knoche, supra note 1, at 1A.
7. See Avrahami v. U.S. News & World Rep., Inc., No. 96-203, slip op. at 10-11
(Cir. Ct. Arlington County June 13, 1996).
8. Zahn & Knoche, supra note 1, at 1A.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/flr65&div=48&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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