Security guru Bruce Schneier wrote a thoughtful commentary in Wired magazine concerning our rights to data privacy, or lack thereof. I agree with Bruce completely that we need a national privacy initiative, but I have little hope that it is going to happen any time soon. National legislation is slow in coming, the court systems are refusing to punish negligenct companies that lose consumer data, and the agencies who regulate data protection and trafficking do little if anything to protect us. As a security professional I would like to see a uniform law as it’s bewildering to try to keep up with all the legislation at the state level, as an individual I would like to know that my data is being appropriately protected. And, as someone who has worked in a company that had billions of records of various types of protected data (financial transactions, social security numbers) I was constantly appalled that most of the executive team I worked with never seemed to make the connection that there were PEOPLE at the end of the data chain. Thanks again, Bruce, for expressing a concern that I think nearly everyone has.
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