Catching UP With ... Kenneth Curtis

MAN STILL PEEVED OVER URINE BAN

Six years ago, South Carolina's Kenneth Curtis made headlines by selling
his urine over the Internet to customers intent on flouting company drug
tests. After state legislators crafted a law banning such sales, Curtis was
arrested and sentenced to six months in jail, a term he completed last
April. Curtis, 47, recently spoke with staff writer Jennifer Rothacker.

Q. Is your urine-selling Privacy Protection Services Inc. still in business?

I still own Privacy Protection Services, but I had to sell my interest in
the urine-selling business in order to appease the judge. I'm the only one
in the world prohibited from selling urine anywhere in the world by a
circuit judge.

I'm still in privacy protection, and working on research and development on
some other privacy products that will be just as controversial as the
(urine tests). (For example) taking the tracking equipment out of your car.
Any new car has equipment in it that provides information your insurance
company can download and see (for example) how fast you are going. People
are incriminating themselves when they have these things in their cars.

Or the hard drive in your computer. No matter how much you reformat a
computer, it will keep (certain) information it had before. I'm making a
hard drive that will self-destruct.

Q. Are you concerned such products encourage illegal behavior? No. I'm a
law-abiding person and would never encourage anybody to do anything illegal.

Q. What prompted you to start the urine business?

When you have to take a dozen urine tests a year (as a pipe fitter and
welder) and find them as invasive as I did, it was a humiliating procedure.
You don't know what happens to the information. ... The companies could be
doing pregnancy testing or sickle-cell testing.

Q. In light of your prison time, do you have any regrets?

I regret my naivete of the realities of the judicial system and how
political our judicial system has become. But I don't regret what I did.

Q. Do you have any more legal maneuvers planned?

I've done as much as I can paying lawyers to defend a cause that should
have never made it into the courts. It's a dead point for the state of
South Carolina until the people have decided they've had enough.

Q. How about politics?

I did run for lieutenant governor (in 2000) and did quite well. David
Thomas, the man who created the (S.C) legislation against me, was running
for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket. I ran against him on the
Libertarian ticket. That was very gratifying. I used the opportunity to
express my opinion.