I, along with a very large number of other bloggers, writers and instructors, often pick apart data protection and privacy laws and regulations, and point out how certain portions of them are infeasible for most organizations to implement, and talk about the types of laws that should be inacted to protect personally identifiable information (PII) and privacy. But how many of us actually do something about it and contact our lawmakers to communicate this information?
I don’t do it nearly enough. I will sometimes send a message to my U.S. senators, but I need to do it more. That is on my list to improve upon in 2008.
Do you know who your lawmakers are? In the U.S. you can go here, enter your zip code, and viola! You will have a list of the elected officials for your state, along with their contact information.
Unfortunately, many of them do not provide an actual email address, but force you to write to them via a web form. However, if they read it, then it is worth your time to write your concerns along with suggestions for improvements.
You can also send the same messages via postal mail if you want to increase the probability it will actually get in front of their eyes. I like to put “I AM YOUR VOTING CONSTITUENT” on my envelopes and messages as a way to catch their attention.
What is neat about this site is that most (possibly all) of the elected officials have a “soapbox commentary” where you can write your message to them for everyone visiting their site to see. However, I’m not sure the elected officials even view this site regularly, if at all.
Tags: awareness and training, congress, data protection law, government, Information Security, IT compliance, policies and procedures, privacy, privacy law, risk management, security law, security training