Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
the executive branch of the federal government, not the legislative or judicial branches.
The act carries a presumption that the government will release the requested records.
If an agency does not disclose records, it must explain why the information is being
withheld.
There are nine exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act, spelling out those
situations in which the government may legitimately withhold information. For exam-
ple, a document may be withheld if it has been classified as secret for national defense
or foreign policy reasons. The government may withhold the release of documents con-
taining trade secrets or confidential commercial or financial information. Another ex-
emption deals with documents related to law enforcement investigations.
E-ZPass is an automatic toll collection system used on most toll roads, bridges, and
tunnels between Illinois and Maine. Drivers who have installed an E-ZPass tag (an RFID
transponder) in their vehicles are able to pass through toll booths without stopping to
pay an attendant. Instead, an E-ZPass reader installed in the automated toll lane gets
information from the tags of the cars that pass through and deducts the appropriate toll
from each driver's account.
The New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) has installed tag
readers at locations other than toll booths in order to track the progress of individual
vehicles. In this way the system can provide helpful information to other drivers by
displaying on electronic signs above the turnpike the estimated time to reach popular
destinations. According to the NYSDOT, the system encrypts information from individ-
ual tags, deletes the information as soon as the vehicle passes the last reader, and never
makes information about individual cars available to the department [83].
However, states do maintain records of when cars pass through toll booths, and
most of the states in the E-ZPass network provide information in response to court
orders in criminal and civil cases. A well-known example is the case of Melanie McGuire,
a New Jersey nurse suspected of murdering her husband and throwing his dismembered
corpse into Chesapeake Bay. To help prove their case against McGuire, prosecutors used
E-ZPass records to reconstruct her movements. E-ZPass records are also playing a role
in divorce cases by providing evidence of infidelity. Pennsylvania divorce lawyer Lynne
Gold-Bikin explained how E-ZPass helped her show that a client's husband had been
unfaithful: “He claimed he was in a business meeting in Pennsylvania. And I had records
to show he went to New Jersey that night” [84].
Early in Chapter 5 we described privacy as a “zone of inaccessibility.” People have infor-
mation privacy to the extent that they have some control over who has access to their
personal information. In quite a few modern situations, people may have very little con-
trol; they must cede access to their personal information if they wish to use the service
provided. If the loss of control is accompanied by a loss of tranquility or interferes with
