Despite what I am about to say, I am a privacy advocate. I should have privacy protection because I’m a really great guy. Don’t believe me? Just ask my mother.
But should the hacker have his/her privacy protected? What about the spammer? The black market drug dealer? The neo-nazi, white supremacist or foreign terrorist recruiter then? Where do we draw the line between who we protect as a group and our obligation to protect ourselves?
In many ways, that line has already been drawn-- long before any of us were born.
In the US, if you are legally driving then you have a state-issued driver’s license. That license, with your full legal name, address, weight, height, eye-color, date of birth and license number is a public document and as such is publicly available. I can get a copy of all your information contained in that public document.
Vote much? Voter polls are also publicly available documents in the US and are commonly used to locate people.
There are dozens of examples beyond these of how your information is either publicly available or imminently accessible-- through already legal means.
There’s been no place in the US where, even doing small business from home, that laws do not require you to maintain a business license-- another public document complete with your name, phone and the location of your operation.
But as with anything, there are ways around such transparency… you can keep a mailbox for your address. Have separate phones for business. Neither of these options are all that costly.
But for most legitimate businesses it’s actually counter-productive to maintain such privacy. After all, you want people to find you, to contact you, etc. The concept of selective privacy on this level just sounds confusing.
If the WHOIS rules are clear and universally applied, then I think they’re not so bad. I say this as someone who has invoked those rules to his advantage and for my own sense of justice.
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