Congressional Digest

Excerpt

With the advent of the Internet, information privacy has become one of the central policy issues of our time, following a pattern of legal responses to evolving communications systems that have increased the collection, dissemination, and use of personal information — from mail delivery and telegrams to phone conversations and electronic messages. It has long been illegal to open someone else’s mail, and current regulations limit a telephone company’s ability to resell what it learns about a customer’s phone activity. The same is not true, however, for information collected by Internet service providers (…