AMERICAN NOTES: Stopping Snoopers

It takes 346 pages to spell out the ways in which individual privacy can be protected from overzealous snoopers in this electronic age. That is the length of a report submitted by a federal advisory commission last week urging the establishment of five basic principles: 1 ) no system for recording data about people should be kept secret; 2) anybody should be able to find out what the records say about him and how the information is being used; 3) anybody should be able to correct errors in the records; 4) information collected about a person for one purpose should not be used for another; 5) any organization keeping records on people should be sure the data are reliable and are not misused.

Backing the conclusions, HEW Secretary Caspar Weinberger declared that "nothing shall take precedence over an individual's constitutionally guaranteed rights." Well said, but do the new guide lines apply retroactively to all the people whose records were compiled in the White House in violation of every one of those principles?