 |
Willis H. Ware
1. Introduction
2. Historical Development
3. United States Posture
4. Source of the Problem
5. Privacy as a Public Policy Issue
6. Contemporary Privacy
6.1 Current Example
7. Public Policy Again
7.1 An Illustration – CNI
8. The Broadened Public Issue
9. Possible Approaches to Protection
10. Related Effects
11. Privacy as Social Equity
12. New Privacy Versus Old
13. Context for New Privacy
14. Privacy Versus Public Distaste
15. The Future for Privacy
16. References
Now ask: What has changed since the 1970s? What is really different about privacy issues today?
The answer:
A thriving industry dealing in personal information has emerged and it is quite different in nature from what existed in the 1970s.
In the large, it emerged from the same companies that pioneered credit-data reporting, but there are new players also. The original credit-data companies had the data; they knew how to manipulate and process it; they had the big computer systems in place; they had the means for distribution; they had an established customer base. They saw the revenue stream and the potential profits from vastly larger activities in the selling of personal data, and new technology supported anything they wanted to do.
Computer and communications technology has driven the growth of the information industry. Information that once had to be laboriously assembled by hand or punched-card methods, can be bought in machine form. For instance, the Departments of Motor Vehicles in the states are generally glad to sell lists of registered drivers and car ownership. Corresponding lists of boat and aircraft owners are equally easy to get. Property records have been computerized and are, by law, public records. A lot of other things, including some related to justice and law enforcement, also fall in the class of public records. Census tract data can be purchased on tapes, on floppys and disk packs. A whole industry thrives on assembling and selling data.
The telephone companies, liberated by the AT&T breakup, generate additional revenue through sales of phone lists, sorted and indexed in various ways. The United States Postal Service can provide a database of zip codes vs. street address. Even census data, anonymous as it is, can be folded in on the basis of geographical location. Lists of contributors can be obtained; lists of subscribers to magazines or technical journals can be bought. There are on-line subscriber databases where some information is readily available for a fee, even to individuals.
Business is booming in personal information; and in the large without legal or regulatory oversight; and without a stated public policy to guide or oversee it.
In addition to legitimate and legal sources, all sorts of leakage opportunities exist for other kinds of information to migrate from possibly protected environments into general databases. Facts (for example, one’s Social Security Number) have a way of getting around; and with extensive and rapid interchange of data among record keepers, nothing is secret very long.
Nominally, lists are thought of for mailing purposes, but indeed they can have quite different uses. One of the more troublesome is the completeness of the dossier that can be developed from factual information, either as it exists directly or as it can be inferred or extrapolated from partial data.
Home > Research Resources > Computing and Privacy > Contemporary Privacy Issues
HOME | IN
THE NEWS | RESEARCH RESOURCES
TEACHING
RESOURCES | STUDENT RESOURCES
LINKS
| THE GALLERY | STAFF
The Research Center on Computing & Society
at Southern Connecticut
State University
501 Crescent Street • New Haven, CT 06515
Director: (203) 392-6790 •
e-mail: webmaster@computerethics.org
© 2000 – 2007 – Research Center on Computing & Society