How sharing data 'advances privacy'
Published: 27 Feb 2004 11:35 GMT
The CIP bill did receive a great deal of brush-back from people on both ends of the political spectrum.
We solved it and got it through Congress. But a major paradigm shift in attitude has to take place in the future. Privacy activists have to understand that the most significant advance in privacy will come from information sharing. That's counterintuitive, but the fear of information sharing is based on the assumption that the only reason someone wants your information is because they want to damage you. The fact is that the reason people want the information is to protect you.
Isn't that a two-edged sword? The temptation to abuse the use of the information, and the issue of individuals owning and controlling their personal information is a subject of much debate.
Yes. It's been an interesting political experience for me, because the far left -- who generally lead privacy advocacy, like Ralph Nader -- say you can't let information out, because corporations get a hold of it, and the far left hates corporations. We've had these debates in Congress. People say to me that a corporation will be able to target you, and I ask, "why is that bad?" If a corporation knows me better, then they can target their products that will serve me better.
The far right is equally or more suspicious about government. The reaction to the Patriot Act, for example, was, "these people can read my library record." Why would the government want to read your library records, if you were not connected to any threat? You are assuming that the government has nothing better to do.
Don't you think that people want a choice and some control over what information they provide or that a corporation can use?
I can opt out.
There is a great potential to abuse the information, and we have seen instances of personal information leaking out or used inappropriately. Do you believe that people should have more control over their own information?
The reality is that corporations want repeat customers. They are not going to drive away customers. Having run a business, I know that I don't want to tick my customers off. If I use that information in any way, that causes my customers to leave; I'm a loser. On the other side, we've got the government. We've got to protect the homeland, and to do that, we have to have a free flow of information.
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