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Mr. KASTENMEIER. I would now like to yield to the Senator from Vermont, Mr. Leahy.

Mr. LEAHY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Barton, let me ask you a couple questions, because I did talk about some of the basic premises and concerns that we share. We shouldn't be able to have just anybody come waltzing in and find out what you watch or what I watch or what your neighbors watch or don't watch. And I understand the interest you have in being able to develop indirect market techniques and mailing lists.

Let me give you an example of some of the things that concern me. I have three children. One is a young teen, who sent in for a manual on karate or kung fu or whatever all the kids were doing at that time.

It came to him. The label on it had something unique about it. I believe it had one letter off or something like that, but the thing came and it was an innocuous thing about how to teach yourself karate or whatever. He probably looked at it for 10 minutes in a typical kid's fashion and then threw it away to be forgotten. But what wasn't forgotten was the next 6 or 7 months.

I mean, I don't know what getting a karate manual triggers, but I couldn't believe the stuff that started coming to this teenager. It ranged from the Soldier of Fortune type ads to some of the most prurient lingerie things I have ever seen. There were ads for Xrated books, videos, and something that came very close to how to kill your neighbor. And I'm serious, it seems to have triggered all of these things.

You know, it wasn't ads from "Sports Illustrated" or "Fish and Game Weekly" or something like that. I mean, these are wild sorts of things. We finally came to the point where my wife and I kept going down to the Postmaster and just kept bringing these things and filing that little form to take your name off the list, which was semi-effective.

We still get them. Not as many, probably only because we have changed our address and some of them have finally stopped.

Now, you said that you don't object to limiting the disclosure of specific titles of videos. But you disagree with limiting the disclosure of the subject matter of videos.

That is where I have a problem. What triggers from that subject matter? We are talking more and more sophistication with computers and with profiles of people. And politicians do this, too, on profiles of voters and everything else. But how much should we be allowed to profile somebody?

What does it trigger to someone, if I watch old westerns, or if I watch only comedies or whatever? Should I really have to think that somewhere, somebody is building up a profile on me based on my personal habits, when I have no control over it? Wouldn't it make far more sense to say if I want them to do it, let me affirmatively ask to be put on a list. Not the other way around, that I am going to be on that list unless I think enough to ask for my name to be taken off?

Really, I have this vision of big brother, where somebody sits at a massive computer-somebody whom I have never seen, never will meet in my life-but that person can kind of figure out that Patrick Leahy is this sort of person based on what he reads or what he

thinks or what he views and, therefore, he gets pegged a certain way and we are now going to bring whatever the marketing tools are available against him.

Do you see my concern?

Mr. BARTON. It is a very very broad question.

Mr. LEAHY. You don't have to answer yes or no.

Mr. BARTON. I understand exactly what you are talking about. Your comments go way beyond what I consider privacy issues. They go into the whole issue of the amounts of mail you get, the types of mail you get, whether you are comfortable with it, whether you like it and also the vague or maybe more specific feeling as time goes on that there is somebody out there who knows a tremendous amount about you. You are uncomfortable about it, and I would be, too.

In the specific instance you used, and I have no idea who karate clubs rent their list to, but I think you gave us a pretty good example.

Mr. LEAHY. The worst part is they misdelivered it to our neighbors and they said, "you got some more of that mail." Thank you very much.

Mr. BARTON. They must be Republicans. I would say first of all, even if it was uncomfortable and you didn't like it, your son's privacy itself was not being invaded because there was nobody sitting in these companies who knew that your son specifically had gotten a piece of pornographic literature or so forth.

His name exists on a huge computer tape and it is difficult or impossible to get Mr. Leahy's name, and yes, he did do this. It is just not done and often can't be done. Very difficult to do that. In the second case, in terms of the rental of an awful lot of lists, that is a subject that our industry is broaching. And I don't think you can legislate against receiving a lot of mail. But it is of concern.

The best I can say right now is the amount of mail you get and the number of lists you rent, and all that, is something which probably has to be handled through the marketplace because we think, as we get more sophisticated in being able to deliver messages to customers, that in fact that problem will be reduced.

In the case of mail you don't want to receive, such as pornographic mail, and that mail that you describe as you went down to the post office to get your names off the list. There is a mechanism to do that, which is somewhat effective, as you say. We get into a lot of difficulties and we would like to find out to protect people, too. The definition of obscenity and pornography and things of that nature are very difficult ones. That is not a direct answer to your question, but-

Mr. LEAHY. Please understand, Mr. Barton, and I am sympathetic with your views, too. My parents had a business in Vermont that depended on advertising and I understand the concern. I realize how the marketplace works.

A lot of the mail you get and I get and-maybe you don't want to have to admit this-but a lot of us look at it and it goes in the wastebasket. The companies, of course, that do that have to figure how effective they can be. That is fine. And if they are not effective, they go out of business.

A lot of mail I get is ads. I might look at something and say this is a good idea and I will buy it and it proves a service to me. So, I don't object to that.

What I am objecting to is that somewhere a profile builds up of Patrick Leahy or Robert Bork. I am concerned that somewhere based on very direct personal choices on what we read, watch, and think, that somebody builds a profile that is nobody's business except ours and that somebody is able to go into that profile and determine who we are and what we are, based on what we have done in total privacy.

When we read a book, when we watch a video, that is something that should be our choice and our business and nobody else's in the country. That is what I am concerned about and that is why I worked hard on this legislation, so that somebody can't penetrate my privacy or Judge Bork's privacy or anybody else's privacy.

Mr. BARTON. I understand that. And I think that we can probably work out some language in the subcommittee in which the kind of profiling you are concerned about can't be tapped into. Now, I don't believe and I probably will get many of my member companies to jump on me about this, I don't believe the kind of profile you are talking about truly exists as a result of renting various lists.

If you get a piece of mail from XYZ magazine, that probably has been a combination of several lists they have rented which indicates that the people they are sending to may have a certain income, certain interests and so forth.

You can't go into that mailing list and do a specific profile. There are sort of assumptions made when rentals are made in which that specific kind of information doesn't exist in a specific profile. Now, in an individual company, you have profiles of your customers as any retail company has.

Any time I charge to Woodward & Lothrop, Woodies knows everything I buy and my buying patterns. They can advertise to that if they so desire. They don't let people know what that profile is, and I think we can prevent that kind of information from being released, without preventing, within reasonable areas, without preventing a marketing company or a store, whatever it is, to be able to appeal to that person's interest.

Mr. LEAHY. I think

Mr. BARTON. It is a very difficult issue.

Mr. LEAHY. It is, and Mr. Barton, I respect your concerns, and I don't want to trample on free enterprise here, but this is one issue we are going to have to deal with. What happens with interactive television when, in the next generation we are going to be doing so much more by using telephone lines, and televisions to pay bills and buy food, and maybe run the lights in our houses. If somebody wants to spin out the Orwellian theory, you can have this view of knowing what time I leave the house, what time I come back, how much I get paid, when I get paid, whether I pay my bills on time or I am late on some others, what I like to eat, what I am entertaining and everything.

You know, it is almost like having somebody in the dark with binoculars sitting outside your house and it is a little bit chilling. You don't mean to say that we have reached that point, but these

are the concerns that we have, and we will continue to work with you and the organization to tread our way through this.

Mr. BARTON. We worked with you all 2, 3 years ago on the Cable Privacy Bill. There we were dealing with a new technology which had great potential. I think we worked at it from a direct marketing viewpoint. We worked out a satisfactory compromise in which we could use to a certain limited extent the list without revealing specific information.

I think we are sort of falteringly stepping towards, from our industry's viewpoint, what is an expanded approach on this.

Mr. LEAHY. I appreciate your efforts in working that out. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. KASTENMEIER. The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Coble.

Mr. COBLE. I thank the Chairman.

Ms. Goldman, do you disagree with the 1977 recommendations of the Privacy Commission, that direct marketing be left to voluntary compliance or to be more specific, the private industry police and regulate themselves.

Ms. GOLDMAN. One of the things that the Commission said in 1977 is that direct marketers use a number of different methods and at that early stage it didn't really make sense for them to recommend legislation, but what the Privacy Commission did find (and I am reading from the Commission report), after looking at the mailing list operations, is that among the record-keeping organizations that maintain records about individuals, about whom they have a direct relationship, it is a common practice to allow names and addresses to be used without telling the individuals.

"The Commission finds no overwhelming societal justification for such a state of affairs" and in fact they opposed any organization allowing that kind of complete discretion in the rental use of the mailing lists. The Commission also said that with the increased technology they were very concerned about some of the more troubling potentials that we could realize from the use of the mailing lists.

The Commission did look at the issue, and they did express concern. They did stop short of recommending legislation in this area, but they did say that they were very concerned about the future in this area, and now, 10 or 11 years later, we see that things that they were concerned about have occurred and that now is the time to recommend legislation.

I don't know what they would do if they still existed to look at this issue. But they did raise the concern.

Mr. COBLE. You want equal time, Mr. Barton?

Mr. BARTON. We work with the ACLU on many issues and we generally agree. This one we don't agree on. In the first place, concerns have been expressed but not any specifics. I do not know of any specific case in 17 years that we have been involved in privacy programs that the kind of information we are talking about has been revealed.

I don't know of any and I would like to see a record on it. I think our industry's record has been almost unparalled in that area. Secondly

Mr. COBLE. Repeat what you just said.