Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
someone's freedom of decision making, that is a privacy invasion, according to Solove.
We begin this section by giving two examples of government actions to prevent invasion
and then move on to survey two government actions that can be seen as invasive.
After being sworn in as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2001,
Timothy Muris looked for an action that the FTC could take to protect the privacy of
Americans. It did not take long for the FTC to focus on telemarketing. A large segment
of the American population views dinnertime phone calls from telemarketers as an an-
noying invasion of privacy. In fact, Harris Interactive concluded that telemarketing is
the reason why the number of Americans who feel it is “extremely important” not to be
disturbed at home rose from 49 percent in 1994 to 62 percent in 2003 [85]. Respond-
ing to this desire for greater privacy, the FTC created the National Do Not Call Registry
(
www.donotcall.gov)
, a free service that allows people who do not wish to receive tele-
marketing calls to register their phone numbers. The public reacted enthusiastically to
the availability of the Do Not Call Registry by registering more than 50 million phone
numbers before it even took effect in October 2003 [86, 87].
The Do Not Call Registry has not eliminated 100 percent of unwanted solicitations.
The regulations exempt political organizations, charities, and organizations conducting
telephone surveys. Even if your phone number has been registered, you may still receive
phone calls from companies with which you have done business in the past eighteen
months. Still, the registry is expected to keep most telemarketers from calling people
who do not wish to be solicited. The creation of the registry is a good example of how
privacy is seen as a prudential right: the benefit of shielding people from telemarketers
is judged to be greater than the harm caused by putting limits on telephone advertising.
Since the 1960s, television watchers have complained to the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) about loud commercials. The Commercial Advertisement Loudness
Mitigation Act (CALM Act), signed into law by President Obama in December 2010, re-
quired the Federal Communications Commission to ensure that television commercials
are played at the same volume as the programs they are interrupting. The sponsor of the
bill, Representative Anna Eshoo of California, said, “Consumers have been asking for a
solution to this problem for decades, and today they finally have it. . . . It's a simple fix
to a huge nuisance” [88].
In an effort to curb the illegal production of methamphetamine (“meth”), federal
and state governments have passed laws limiting access to products containing pseu-
doephedrine, which is used in the manufacture of methamphetamine. The Combat
Methamphetamine Epidemic Act limits the quantity of pseudoephedrine that an in-
dividual can purchase in a month. Whether the laws have been effective is a matter of
debate. In most states, original Sudafed is still sold behind the counter to adults, but
