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November 10, 2009

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Editorial: Privacy rights in an electronic age

Monday, May 18, 1998 | 1:17 a.m.

THE Internet has been a boon for society, giving people access to information and worlds that never before could have been imagined.

But the dark side to the unleashing of the "Information Age" is that there are crooks out there who have access to extremely personal information, including medical and credit records. Last week, Vice President Al Gore announced the steps the Clinton administration will take to protect the privacy of Americans in cyberspace:

Privacy concerns are all too real and shouldn't be taken lightly. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted, in 1996 the database company Lexis-Nexis acknowledged it paid credit bureaus for Social Security numbers and credit information on millions of Americans so it could resell them to direct marketers.

Just because we have this new technology doesn't mean that we must forfeit our right to privacy. Congress should pass legislation that protects the privacy of medical and credit records that are available through the Internet.

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