Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that unless you are the world's most attractive consumer, your personal information in the context of thousands or millions of other names in a mailing list is probably only worth a few pennies. In other words, the marketplace for personal information is not financially enriching.
Several recent developments seem to turn this question on its head and perhaps represent a privacy advocate's nightmare. The question currently being asked is: How much does a business have to pay an individual to persuade him or her to give up their privacy? The answer seems to be not very much.
Conde Naste publications managed to get its subscribers to blab about all sorts of personal information as part of a survey of readers' interests and attitudes. And now a new California electronic-commerce venture, Free-PC.com, is offering free personal computers and Internet service in exchange for a promise to share personal information and allow the company to monitor your travels on the Internet. When the company announced it would give away 10,000 Compaq PCs, more than 300,000 people visited the company's Web site that day, most of them filling out an application that required basic personal information.
This story shows just how little most of us value our privacy. And now the courts are picking up on this trend. An intriguing decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit carved out an exception to what, until now, has been a practical iron curtain against disclosing personal information. The court reasoned that people would probably be willing to give up their ironclad privacy protections under the Freedom of Information Act if they stood to benefit financially.
The case involved a request for names and addresses of individuals with unclaimed bank accounts at two failed banks in the Washington, D.C., area. Courts previously would have concluded that disclosure of such information was an unwarranted invasion of privacy, even if there was a benefit. But now the courts believe that privacy is one consideration in an economic negotiation and that courts should not be in the business of telling people that their privacy is worth more than money in their pockets.
Interestingly, the current trend focuses exclusively on the benefits an individual might reap from such a bargain. When a third party, like government, stands to financially benefit from selling individuals' privacy, the outrage over privacy invasion can quickly rise to deafening proportions. That's what happened in another recent privacy snafu that made its way into the national press.
A small New Hampshire company called Image Data hit upon the idea of creating a database of photo IDs that could be used by businesses as a partial verification for customers using a check or credit card. A clerk could punch in the customer's name, and a photo of that person would pop up on a small screen, allowing the clerk to verify the customer's identity. What better place to get the raw data for such a database than from drivers' license photos? Image Data started negotiations with
several states, and its plan seemed to be going along smoothly until The Washington Post reported the story.
Public disclosure resulted in a flurry of negative publicity. States caught in the spotlight -- South Carolina, Florida and Colorado -- scurried to disavow their contracts with Image Data. Florida moved first, getting a court to enjoin the contract; the next day, Gov. Jeb Bush canceled it. In doing so, he noted, "I am personally not comfortable with the state mandating license photos for the purpose of identifying authorized drivers, and then selling those photos at a profit for a completely different purpose." Colorado moved to push a bill through its Legislature banning the sale of the photos. South Carolina struck out in court, but the attorney general asked Gov. Jim Hodges to cancel the contract.
Image Data was paying a paltry amount for the photos, although probably in line with their actual economic value. Reports indicated that Colorado was selling 5 million photos for $128,000 and that South Carolina received $5,000 for about 35,000 photos to use in a test. But faced with the public outcry over the state's role in this fiasco, state officials rushed to embrace privacy values.
"If your photograph can be bought and sold like a used car, what other personal information goes on the auction block next?" asked South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon. "What other portion of our life will be deeded away by the government in the future?"
Although speaking like a true politician, Condon demonstrates the difficulty in developing a consistent position on issues like drivers' license information. It was Condon who successfully sued the federal government to block the Drivers Privacy Protection Act, which places severe restrictions on public dissemination of drivers' license information. Such information had been sold by many states for years with little public dissent, probably because few average citizens knew of the practice. For Condon to about-face and preach the sanctity of privacy over the rights of access to public records, once the flow of public opinion is clear, indicates that privacy and access issues are still weighed on an ad hoc basis.
Bad guys in movies sometimes say, "I never met a man who didn't have his price." In the world of privacy, businesses are beginning to feel out just what that price is. So far, the only thing we know is that the price is reasonably cheap, but the benefit has to go to the individual, not to the government.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Harry Hammitt is editor/publisher of Access Reports, a news-letter published in Lynchburg,Va., covering open-government laws and information-policy issues. Email
