March 16, 2000

Chinese Leader Sends Dire Warning Across Strait
What's Wrong With This Picture: A Public Privacy Commission?
Officials Want to Buy Guns Only From Compliant Companies

Chinese Leader Sends Dire Warning Across Strait

Three days before a closely contested presidential election in Taiwan, Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji bluntly warned the island's voters yesterday against choosing a pro-independence president, saying the future rides on their selection, according to The Washington Post. "Let me advise all these people in Taiwan," Zhu said. "Do not just act on impulse at this juncture, which will decide the future course that China and Taiwan will follow. Otherwise I'm afraid you won't get another opportunity to regret."

In "Let Taiwan Defend Itself," Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies Ted Galen Carpenter explains that similar threats in 1996 emboldened Taiwan and led to Lee Lee Teng-hui's decisive reelection. In "Washington's Incoherent Policy on Taiwan," warns of dire consequences as the Clinton administration has supported a one-china policy on the one hand while promising to "'take very seriously' any attempt by the PRC to use force against Taiwan."

What's Wrong With This Picture: A Public Privacy Commission?

Congressmen Asa Hutchinson (R - Arkansas) and Jim Moran (D - Virginia) want to create a federal privacy commission that would decide what new regulations should apply to American companies, according to Wired News. A bill introduced yesterday would give a 17-member panel 18 months to review current privacy laws and make "recommendations on whether additional legislation is necessary." The measure would take the same approach as a similar commission created by Congress to wrestle with the issue of Internet taxation.

"[Americans] are alarmed at the accessibility of their medical records, they are worried how their financial information is being used, and they want to know what they can get on the Internet without strangers downloading personal information about them," Hutchinson said.

In "How Privacy Regulation Will Chill Commerce," Director of Information Studies Solveig Singleton challenges the notion that top-down regulation is the solution to privacy concerns and argues it would threaten innovation and commerce. In "Innovation Versus Privacy," Singleton argues that information collected by private firms would be used for the benefit of consumers through personalization and regulation would only stifle technological innovation.

Officials Want to Buy Guns Only From Compliant Companies

New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, is urging federal state, and local governments to buy guns only from manufacturers that sign a code of conduct, according to USA Today. The code includes building in trigger locks, cutting off "irresponsible" dealers, and submitting to inspection. Yesterday, Republican Governor George Pataki also proposed sweeping gun controls.

In "Trust the People: The Case Against Gun Control," David B. Kopel writes that the gun control debate comes down to the basic question: "Who is more trustworthy, the government or the people?" In "Gun Policy in the Aftermath of Littleton," Cato Fellow Doug Bandow writes that gun control is misguided and that studies show that guns are used five times as often to prevent as to commit crimes.