>>> What is the PRIVACY Forum? <<< The PRIVACY Forum, created in 1992 by Lauren Weinstein, includes a moderated e-mail digest for the discussion and analysis of issues relating to the general topic of privacy (both personal and collective) in the "information age" of the 1990's and beyond. Topics include a wide range of telecommunications, information/database collection and sharing, and related issues, as pertains to the privacy concerns of individuals, groups, businesses, government, and society at large. The manners in which both the conventional and the controversial concerns of business and government interact with privacy considerations are also topics for digest discussions. There is no charge to receive the digest. The PRIVACY Forum is supported in part by the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) Committee on Computers and Public Policy [http://www.acm.org], Cable & Wireless USA [http://www.cw-usa.net], Cisco Systems, Inc. [http://www.cisco.com], and Telos Systems [http://www.zephyr.com]. These organizations do not operate or control the PRIVACY Forum in any manner, and their support does not imply agreement on their part with nor responsibility for any materials posted on or related to the PRIVACY Forum. Except when unusual events warrant exceptions, digest publication is limited to no more than one or two reasonably-sized digests per week. Given the size of the Internet, this may often necessitate that only a small percentage of overall submissions may ultimately be presented in the digest. Submission volume also makes it impossible for unpublished submissions to be routinely acknowledged. Other mailing lists, with less stringent submission policies, may be more appropriate for readers who prefer a higher volume of messages regarding these issues. The goal of PRIVACY Forum is to present a high quality electronic publication which can act as a significant resource to both individuals and organizations who are interested in these issues. The digest is best viewed as similar in focus to a journal or other specialized publication. The moderator will choose submissions for inclusion based on their relevance and content. All messages included in the digest represent the views of their individual authors and all messages submitted must be appropriate to be distributable without limitations. The PRIVACY Forum is moderated by Lauren Weinstein of Vortex Technology (lauren@vortex.com), in Woodland Hills, California, U.S.A. He has been active regarding a wide range of issues involving technology and society in the ARPANET/Internet community since the early 1970's. Lauren is a member of the ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, and is a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program. The Forum also has an "advisory committee" consisting of three individuals who have offered to act as a "sounding board" to help with any questions of policy which might arise in the course of the Forum's operations. These persons are Peter Neumann of SRI International (the moderator of the excellent and renowned Internet RISKS Forum digest), Marc Rotenburg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and Willis Ware of RAND (one of the U.S.A.'s most distinguished champions of privacy issues). The names and e-mail addresses of subscribers to the PRIVACY Forum mailing list are private (naturally). They are only used to distribute the PRIVACY Forum Digests and will not be used for any other purposes. Following is information regarding operational procedures for the PRIVACY Forum. How to submit items to the PRIVACY Forum ---------------------------------------- Messages being submitted for possible inclusion in the PRIVACY Forum digest should be mailed to the Internet address: privacy@vortex.com All messages sent to privacy@vortex.com which are not obviously only meant for the moderator or are not marked for non-publication will be assumed to be submitted for the digest. How to subscribe/unsubscribe to/from PRIVACY Forum -------------------------------------------------- Individual subscriptions for the PRIVACY Forum are controlled through an automated list handling system. All messages to the list handling system must be in plain text--html and/or mime encodings cannot be processed properly. To subscribe, send a message to: privacy-request@vortex.com with a line in the BODY of the message of the form: subscribe privacy where is your actual name, not your e-mail address (your e-mail address is determined automatically by the list handling system). Also please note that the subscribe command must be in the BODY of your message, not in the "Subject:" field; the "Subject:" field of all messages to the list handling system is ignored. If you don't wish to provide your real name, you can put something else where "full name" would go, but it cannot be left empty. Providing your real name makes it much easier to solve e-mail delivery problems. As mentioned above, your name and e-mail information are private and will only be used to distribute the PRIVACY Forum digests, not for any other purposes. Example: subscribe privacy Dr. Sidney Schaefer Please note that the "subscribe" command is used to create your own individual subscription to the PRIVACY Forum mailing list. Site managers who wish to establish site-wide local redistribution mailing lists for PRIVACY Forum should contact a human at: list-maint@vortex.com and provide the requested local redistribution mailing list address and any other details. Individuals who wish to subscribe directly to PRIVACY Forum (not to a local redistribution mailing list) should *not* contact "list-maint@vortex.com" unless they are having problems with the automatic list handling system "subscribe" command. To unsubscribe from the PRIVACY Forum mailing list, follow the same procedure as above for individual subscriptions, but send the command: unsubscribe privacy in the BODY of your message instead of the "subscribe" command. Once again, this only applies to individual subscriptions, other unsubscription requests (e.g. to remove local redistribution mailing lists from the PRIVACY Forum master list) should be done by sending the address you want to unsubscribe to a human at: list-maint@vortex.com To remove yourself from a local redistribution mailing list, please contact your appropriate local mailing list manager. Access to Archival Materials ---------------------------- >> FTP << The PRIVACY Forum archive, including all issues of the digest and all related materials, is available via anonymous FTP from site "ftp.vortex.com", in the "/privacy" directory. Use the FTP login "ftp" or "anonymous", and enter your e-mail address as the password. The typical "README" and "INDEX" files are available to guide you through the files available for FTP access. >> E-MAIL << All of the PRIVACY Forum materials are also available by e-mail via the list handling system. All messages to the list handling system must be in plain text--html and/or mime encodings cannot be processed properly. To receive an index of available materials, follow the same command procedure described earlier for list subscription requests, but send the command: index privacy in the BODY of your message. To retrieve a particular item from the archive, send the command: get privacy in the BODY of your message, where is replaced by the name of the particular item of interest. For example, to retrieve the first PRIVACY Forum digest: get privacy priv.01.01 Please note that only the first command in any message you send to the list handling system will be processed. Any subsequent commands in a single message will be ignored. For more information regarding the list handling system, follow the same command procedure described above, but send the command: help in the BODY of your message. >> GOPHER << All PRIVACY Forum materials can also be obtained through the Internet Gopher system via a gopher server on site "gopher.vortex.com". >> WORLD WIDE WEB (WWW) << PRIVACY Forum information and archive materials can be accessed on the World Wide Web (WWW) via the Vortex Technology WWW home page at the URL: http://www.vortex.com