Use of Private Data by Corporations
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Corporations have long used what we might call private data for a competitive advantage. What has changed recently is that with the increasing use of the computer, companies can access even more such data than ever before and perhaps make better use of it. Every company develops its own database of private information based simply on its own clientele, with information such as income levels, residency patterns, spending habits, and so on. Today, computer services gather and collate the same type of information on a much broader scale, making use of data gathered by everything from credit card use to swiping a supermarket club card at the checkout counter. Financial institutions possess a mass of private data by which they can make decisions and target consumers on such things as loans, sales of financial instruments, and similar issues. Dockrill states that the concern for privacy through the possible intrusion of electronic data-processing equipment is of relatively recent origin. Developments in technology have created greatly advanced capabilities and an associated reduction in cost for this type of equipment. There has also been a growth in volume and in the complexity of everyday transactions using the computer. Today, there are some 48 million individual systems world-wide, and growth is expected at a rapid pace for some time. Dockrill also details the usual concerns about invasion of privacy by computer and finds that many of these scenarios focus upon delib
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Information about people is becoming increasingly useful to marketing agents, and vast digital collections of personal information are being collected. In some cases, the data is sold, but in others, it is freely available. Now that the Web has become the ultimate data dissemination tool, databases of personal information can be queried very quickly, easily, and above all, anonymously. Never has the task of an investigator (or a casual interrogator) been easier (Halstead and Ashman).
Yet, as noted, people express more fear of government data collection than private, though in fact data collection has been privatized to a great degree:
It also is clear that data collection is increasingly a core activity of private companies, rather than government organizations . . . However the public is less inclined to view commercial data collections as a threat to personal privacy or liberties. This could in part be because such data collections are hidden, and their extent and use are not publicized (Halstead and Ashman).
The way American companies use private information has been noted by other governments, though, and in 1997 led to a challenge:
For the last quarter of a century, the Europeans have argued that we do not
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Approximate Word count = 1255
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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