What a bunch of creeps. A totally unnecessary invasion of privacy.Precisely.
Fulfilling the legal requirement to register to carry a concealed weapon does NOT give the newspaper permission to print PRIVATE personal information of gun owners any more than they could freely print the PRIVATE personal information of vehicle owners.
See, for example, from http://www.motorists.org/ericpeters/archive/privacy.html:
Op-Ed: A Victory for Privacy
By Eric Peters
2/7/00For once, Big Brother won't be watching you -- or releasing information about you to private, for-profit companies so they can harass you with dinner-time telephone solicitations. Or making it possible for psychotics to track down your home address through DMV records.
Last week, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the dissemination of such information can be barred and that such prohibitions do not encroach upon state authority because of the infringement on personal privacy it represents.
You may not have known it, but state departments of motor vehicles in many states have for years routinely sold -- yes, sold -- information about you to telemarketing companies, among others. Millions of dollars in revenue have been generated in this fashion. State motor vehicle agencies have also been giving out this information for free (or for a small processing charge) to pretty much anyone who asks for it -- crooks and nutcases included.
Your name, address, telephone and Social Security numbers are all in the DMV computer. You had to provide them when you applied for a driver's license. And marketing companies are keenly interested in the data. It helps them find you, helps then nail down your likely income level (via your address; they can figure out how much your home is worth and thus how much cake you take home), and, most important of all, gives them the golden key to your ear -- a home telephone number.
They are quite willing to pay for this intelligence. And state motor vehicle departments have been eager to provide it.
Before you can say "Good evening, is this Mr. Smith?" an annoying call has interrupted your supper or made you get up from the sofa just when you were beginning to get comfortable.
But it gets worse. Fraud artists have discovered a veritable gold mine in those DMV computers. Information about you, such as your date of birth, address, Social Security number, etc. can be used to generate fake identities -- based on yours. Crooks can set up bank accounts, obtain credit cards, go on a shopping spree -- all in your name, naturally. The bills, of course, are credited to the "real" you -- until you manage to convince the merchants and credit reporting agencies that you're an innocent victim of fraud.
But worst of all, violent criminals can find out where you live -- simply by filing out a short form and cross-referencing your license plate number with DMV records. Actress Rebecca Shaeffer found about this the hard way. She was murdered by a stalker who got her home address via the DMV.
Congress responded to the Schaeffer murder by passing the Driver's Privacy Protection Act in 1994; the DPPA bars states from disclosing personal information without the formal consent of the driver...CLICK HERE for more