[LINK] unintended consequences of privacy

[Craig Sanders]

On Tue, Mar 01, 2005 at 11:49:59AM +1100, Deus Ex Machina wrote:
> imo. many of these ideals that sound good in principal like privacy seem
> to be attempts to slug business. 

no, stop being paranoid. it's not about "slugging business". it's about
protecting the rights of individuals.

business interests are NOT, contrary to your cherished belief, an automatic
trump on the rights of individuals.

some things are more important than facilitating the easiest and cheapest path
to profit for business....and sometimes (rarely) businesses just have to pay
their own expenses without massive subsidies and "externalisation" of costs by
lobbied-for legislation.

> it doesnt work that way. business ultimately pass these costs on to
> consumers.

fine.  perhaps if consumers paid the true cost of what they consume they
wouldn't consume quite so much junk.  they might begin to limit their
consumption to essentials plus a few luxuries.

consumer pricing is yet another thing which is not and should not be an
automatic trump on the rights of individuals.

and while it is true to say that all individuals are, at least some of the
time and at least to some extent, also consumers, "consumer" is only part of
what they are - they are people, individuals first and foremost.

> personally I have no interest in collecting private information,
> and in fact most business are not interested in private data. all I
> require is to be able to identify a customer and be able to collect
> debt. if we want more information we do voluntary surveys. if I cant
> collect debt then we will migrate to a system where credit cant
> happen, removing convenience for customers.

that's a business decision you have to make...and you need to weigh up
whether the cost of doing that is greater than the cost of occasional
bad debt.

either way, the cost of your decision is yours (and indirectly, your
customers') to bear.

> not once in 8 years have I ever been approached to sell our customer
> data. and nor would we. to do so would be a breach of trust with
> customers. I dont know any sucessful business that doesnt see it that way.

some businesses exist ONLY in order to trade the private data of customers and
potential customers (and anyone else they can somehow acquire data about).

craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>           (part time cyborg)