Powers also has legislation barring the state from collecting information on visitors to its Web sites without permission. Another bill by Powers requires businesses that collect personal identifiers and pass them along to third parties to have written policies on the use of the information. This would prevent the annoying phenomenon, known to anyone who receives telemarketing calls, of picking up the phone only to hear a long silence before the seller speaks. But even as the privacy issue picks up steam in Madison, state government has set up an increasing number of information registries that contain everything from lists of AIDS patients to babies with birth defects to genetic information on criminals. And more registries are on the drawing boards - from a proposed statewide voter list to a catalog of Wisconsin residents using pesticides.
Government is like a junk picker with information - they collect anything and everything.
Some data collections are readily available on the Internet. Numerous lists, registries That report identifies more than 100 registries and reporting systems being maintained by federal, state and local governments. While this employee database is not available to the press and public, it is now part of a nationwide directory that is interconnected with most, if not all, states. Doeppers complained that data subjects are seldom informed about their inclusion in a registry and rarely allowed to consent if and when that information is made available on the Internet, or used for another purpose. Erpenbach said he is less concerned with government registries than with the unchecked flow of personal information into the hands of business.