Online Privacy's New Hot Button: Access
Privacy from Companies
11/29/2000; 4:41:51 PM

'Forget the opt-out, opt-in debate: The thorniest online privacy issue on Capitol Hill is whether Web retailers, network advertisers, and other companies should be required to provide consumers with the ability to access, correct, and delete their personal data from the firms' databases. "If the health-care industry can figure out how to provide access in a fair way, then we will have a framework for financial firms, online retailers, and everyone else," says Lawrence Ponemon, the head of Pricewaterhouse Coopers' privacy compliance unit.'

Yes, we should be allowed.  And it should be extended off-line, too. If you can't handle the expense of this, then stop collecting the data.

This is so fair it's a miracle that anybody thinks that it might be unfair.  How many people's lives have been ruined by inaccurate data that nobody would let them change?  These problems aren't going to be made any less serious on the Internet.