February 28, 2000

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Business/IT:
Online Privacy: Protect It Or Lose It
Businesses must own up to their obligations concerning online privacy--or pay the price

By Bob Evans

he last time (well, the last time before this time) a president of the United States was involved in an impeachment drama, privacy was also a rip-roaring big issue. The technology at hand was a tape recorder, and while we didn't have a rampant amnesia epidemic back in the warm and fuzzy days of Richard Nixon to match the outbreak that hit so many in the 1999 version, we did have a secretary who explained that an extraordinary contortion she had to undertake to hit the erase button for 18 minutes (by mistake!) was something she did all the time and it was just a random fluke. The fact that the "everyday" maneuver she had to execute would have challenged an Olympic gymnast didn't seem to rattle the Nixon gang. Their view seemed to be that privacy was in the eye of the beholder-or maybe of the office-holder.

Privacy played no small part in last year's impeachment shenanigans, too. We heard variations on the theme ranging from "everybody does it" to "nobody got hurt"-and all that hypocrisy rang as hollow as the nonsense that the Republicans attempted to spew in the early 1970s. We Americans tend to have incredibly diverse views on many things, but we do concur just about unanimously on some fundamentals. For instance, we take our right to be left alone very seriously, but we also feel very strongly that the right to privacy carries obligations and responsibilities that can't be taken lightly. It's too important, too precious to be misused and violated.

So it is that the latest round of heightened tensions over privacy in the online world have raised numerous questions that defy easy answers. The furor over DoubleClick's presumed intentions to match IDs with consumer profiles has sparked vigorous debate and brought once again to the fore the issue of what happens when extraordinary technology, consumer information, and rich databases get into the hands of companies that are either inexperienced, naive, devious, blockheaded, or some combination of all four. It's also lit a fire under some of our Congressional legislators eager to protect us from all harm, a subject that I, like so many Americans, find particularly distasteful.

For years, we in the business technology world have said, "We don't need to have our use of databases and data mining and their applications regulated because we know best and we would never abuse the rights and privacy of our private consumers or businesses." Leave us alone, we told the eager beavers in D.C., and we'll work it all out and everybody will leave happy, their privacy as inviolate as the Third Little Pig's brick house.

And what happens is that another frightening manifestation of short-sighted thinking on the part of a high-profile company-in this case, DoubleClick-sets a lot of progress back by years and gives some of The Protectors more grist for making this into, quite literally, a federal case. I think we've screwed up royally here, folks, and while I greatly fear the entry of governmental overseers into the vigorous world of E-business that has created one of the strongest global economies the world has ever seen, I think we've collectively gone too far on this one. Were this latest privacy flap stirred up by some company new to the Internet, it would still be disastrous, but perhaps controllable. But for a company like DoubleClick to be at the center of the storm? A company born to the Internet, totally enmeshed in the Internet, a poster-child for the Web generation? If this company can push so close to the brink, is there any hope for the rest of us?

If I were in Congress, I'd jump on this privacy horse and ride it full-tilt all the way to a new amendment to the Constitution. We have met the enemy and it is us, as the philosopher Pogo so sagely intoned.

It's time for another strong dose of personal responsibility from individuals and businesses-you can't possibly overestimate the seriousness of this situation. Write to Congress? Well, maybe. Better yet, if you've got a Privacy Policy, don't hide it at the bottom of your home page-flag it at the top. Lock arms with others in your industry and promise to shun companies that violate the privacy of customers. Train your employees about the incredible danger of shortcuts and silly, short-sighted, lazy, and intrusive practices. Either we own up to our obligations and fight this one, folks, or we face the consequences. And they are ugly.

BOB EVANS
Editor-in-Chief
bevans@cmp.com

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