Big Brother Is Watching Essay Research Paper

Big Brother Is Watching Essay, Research Paper

“Big Brother is Watching”

Privacy in the Information Age.

Vladimira Love

May 13, 2001

Have you sat down to eat dinner, just as you put that first bite into your mouth the phone rings. You know better than to answer it, but you do any way. To your dismay you find out that you were right Tele-marketers. As you hang up you wonder how did they get my number. How do they know what are your interests, likes, dislikes.

You hand the cashier a plastic card with a magnetic strip which contains your name and address. All of your purchases are recorded and a few days later you receive discount coupons for a new product you might like in the mail. You think that targeted marketing in the information age really works!

A woman feels she may be expecting, she goes to the pharmacy to purchase a home pregnancy test. Without thinking, she hands her “bonus card” to the cashier and a few days later she receives mail from baby product manufactures. She is thinking that she is living in an information age nightmare.

Information technology, and particularly the internet and the World Wide Web, can provide benefits that were only dreamed of a decade ago. These new opportunities, however, raise questions about potential threats to personal privacy that are just now starting to be understood.

Consumers, for example, like “one on one marketing” at Miscellaneous Web sites which allows them to browse various selections recommended based on previous purchases and their personal profile. They are much less sure about the site’s developing real time profiles of users based on demographics or psychographics. Similarly, workaholics are attracted to internet dating services that promise to find high achievers their ideal mate; They gladly spend thirty minutes completing the extensive introductory questionnaire. They are less thrilled when they later find that “E-Mate” has been acquired by another company specifically for its extensive data base of personal information.

Our concern is the privacy of personal information in a digitally networked world where personal data can be input, stored, sorted, analyzed, mined, transmitted and exchanged globally with increasing ease and decreasing cost. There is growing concern about data privacy, especially on the Net which is accompanied by marked disagreements about what can, and should be done. These differences are exacerbated by very real cross-cultural and cross-national differences in values, history and economic philosophies. Where national borders are not even speed bumps on the information superhighway.

We argue that while the protection of personal data in a networked world requires transnational solutions, stark differences exist in basic privacy values among nations and cultures. These differences, which flow from basic cultural traits such as individualism and varying political-economic philosophies, are very real and cannot be “papered over.” This circle must be squared: global solutions must deal with local differences. The data privacy issue serves as a metaphor for more general problems of governance of the world economy given the reality of basic, underlying cross-border social, cultural and political differences.

Data privacy is a concern on the Net. A recent E-Trust survey found that over 80% of consumers are more concerned about privacy on the Net than with the telephone or mail. A widely cited Business Week/Harris poll reported that 61% of respondents who use the Net cite privacy as their primary concern. An OECD workshop concluded that unless consumers gained more confidence that their privacy would be protected, the growth of Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) would be hindered.

Consumers should be concerned. While the situation may have improved somewhat in the interim, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission reported that while over 85% of Web sites collected personal information, only 14% provide any notice about their privacy practices and only 2% provide a comprehensive privacy policy.

Concern about privacy was around long before the Net and Web. The New York Police Department was tapping phones within a decade or two of Bell’s first call. Party lines and operators were notorious for eavesdropping. More recently the widespread use of credit cards and the development of credit bureaus have raised serious concerns about control over personal information. It is reasonable to ask is anything really new.

I believe the answer is “yes,” that the explosion of interconnected digital networks makes a significant difference in the economics and feasibility of using “private” information. More of what we do is (or can be) input in to a computer system than ever before: debit card purchases and ATM withdrawals; phone calls; the location of your cell phone; supermarket purchases; where your Web browser is pointing; where you are when you fill your car with gas; the toll booth you just passed through; and the extensive information you provided when applying for insurance, a new car or a mortgage on the Web.

As important, the cost of acquiring, storing, sorting, analyzing, mining, transmitting and exchanging information is falling dramatically. Most important is the inter-operability or interconnectivity. We live in a world of decentralized but interconnected computer networks. Once