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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
As an illustration, take the current debate over calling number identification (CNI, also called ANI) that the telephone companies are beginning to offer. Without getting into the pros and cons of CNI as a desirable adjunct to telephone service, consider how it is being marketed. The traditional “buyer beware” context in which we all have learned to function implies: (1) that we have alternate choices – competitive products or services, and (2) we are under no compulsion to buy.
Marketing of the CNI service violates both those premises. At the local telephone level, we do not have competitive choices; and many telephone companies do, or are proposing to, offer the service in a biased manner; namely, a subscriber’s phone number will be forwarded to the called party every time unless the calling subscriber pays an additional fee or takes additional actions during calling to avoid the CNI action. Every subscriber is being forced to become part of a game with which he may wish not to be involved.
But staying out of the game involves either an additional fee to the subscriber – as obtaining an unlisted number has traditionally imposed an extra monthly fee – or additional key touches or dialed numbers to turn off the process. One way, the disinterested subscriber pays money; the other way, he pays in time to make the additional dialing actions.
Normally one pays for something if he wants it. The telephone companies have inverted the principle; they are asking you pay for it if you do not want it.
Whatever one thinks about the merit of CNI and its present implementation, the telephone companies have implicitly and without public debate made a major public policy declaration. In effect, policy has been established that the importance of calling number identification is so important to society overall that every telephone subscriber must participate in it, unless he is willing to pay extra in some fashion to avoid it. The phone companies are not only marketing CNI in a socially biased fashion, they have intruded on the long-standing tenets of a capitalist society; “buyer beware” no longer works. And they have done this from the position of monopolistic power.
Just to put this in perspective, marketing of call-forwarding is neutral; there is no compulsion. If one wants it, pay for it; if not, do not pay for it; but no one is finessed into being involved with it against his wishes.
Go to: 8. The Broadened Public Issue
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