Reply #7: Why shouldn't I prosecute for losing my phone #? [View All]

I see where there would difficulties in deciding when I could prosecute. But something has to be done don't you think? How did we get legislation protecting personal medical information? I think the lack of congressional will is most pertinent and accurate here.

The bigger issue is that we are collectively devaluing our privacy. I would argue that desensitizing ourselves to the loss of our private information is part of the reason there is a lack of public outcry to the recent NSA spying issue. But that is another issue and I digress.

The point is that organizations have collections of data, databases full of relational data. They don't just lose my phone number. They lose thousands of phone numbers. All at once. And they probably lose a lot of related data as well.

Having my phone number in a phone book or in an online directory is clearly a different situation. The intent is clearly different. The amount of related data available to be lost is much less.

So what is the difference between a corporate employee losing a local phone book and losing tapes with Gigabytes of customer information? This to me, does not seem an impossible thing to distinguish. Ask yourself why they would want to warn me about losing tapes with my data and not warn me about losing the phone book.

What is the difference between someone that works for the phone company losing a phone book and the tapes with the database files on it? Fundamentally, it is a breach of trust and negligence. There does not seem to be much wiggle room there. But I don't think that it would be an impossible task to delineate liability issues when it comes to safeguarding personal information.