European privacy boards have no place in our free society.

European privacy boards have no place in our free society

THE May 28, 1990 DMA Washington Report reported Rep. Robert Wise's misguided assault on our nation's heritage of First Amendment freedoms. He and others display an appalling lack of perspective when they speak of what we could learn from Europe with regard to government-controlled censorship boards (also known as data "protection" boards -- another expensive addition to our burgeoning bureaucracy). A number of D.C. beltway types speak of us being "behind Europe" as to "privacy" regulations or the establishment of "formal government organizations to pay attention to privacy issues."

Rep. Wise cites polls whose results demonstrate that the ability toframe the question is the ability to frame the answer. This insidious assault on First Amendment liberty in the American context goes unanswered elsewhere, so it will be answered here.

One reader's (Jim Ware) letter to this magazine prompted a recent "Legal Outlook" (1) on comparative European/American law related to database marketing. Ware addressed the restrictive German laws on telemarketing. These parallel other European laws severely restricting the use of database files and free speech in general.

Their laws don't parallel ours due to our unique constitutional safeguards on free speech and access. Why other First Amendment advocates don't see this or are afraid to comment is beyond me. How Rep. Wise could argue that this will hurt multinational business interests is at best ill-informed. Business invests here because of our freedoms and certainly no investment here or overseas is worth compromising our heritage.

Further, this distribution and access are value-added marketing advantages unique to the United States. Their loss would be real to your job and the constitutional foundation of our society. Finally, they'd diminish you personally as a citizen.

This is subtle but essential to this nation's long-term economic health as well as our businesses. We continuously speak of our "information economy" without a thought as to what this really is or means. It is obvious that the information rationing proposed by Rep. Wise, et al., runs directly contrary to the growth or even maintenance of this economy. …

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