May 2, 2007

NEWS: Cyber-assassination?

Glenn Hagele, director of the Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance, wants you to know that the government is not doing everything they can to help you combat identity theft. Hagele, who calls the crime “cyber-assassination,” says that he was targeted for identity theft by a competitor, who managed to get Hagele’s identity stolen. Hagele wants stricter enforcements on privacy protection rules. Hagele claims that a critic of his organization's laser eye surgery business has been prominently displaying Hagele’s personal financial information, including his social security number. Hagele says that the information was obtained from public records websites.

Now the victim of what he calls an “Internet hit job,” Hagele wants public access to records over the Internet limited, or done away with altogether. With identity theft burgeoning, the recent availability of public records over the Internet has renewed the controversy between the public's "right to know" and an individual's "right to privacy." Last year, for example, a report on CNET managed to unearth the personal information of Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt. CNET then published the information through their search engine, leading to bad blood between Google and CNET, as well as strict employee restrictions on talking to the media.

As for Hagele, he says he’s taking the fight to Washington. He says he won’t give up until stricter privacy laws are enacted.


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