Privacy in the New America

While it may sound trite, it’s true: The world changed forever on Sept. 11. Our society underwent a fundamental change. Today we are less mercantile than we were before terrorists hijacked our laser-like focus on maximization and efficiency.

We are a very different nation, but our daily obligations are the same. We still have employees to pay, customers to serve and relationships to maintain and build. Meeting those obligations requires us to use information and use it well. However, we must reassess the way we share data and with whom we share it. We must talk with our customers in a more sophisticated fashion about how data creates value and is protected.

Security Is Issue No. 1

The meaning of security has changed in an elemental way. Before Sept. 11, security was ID theft, data control, financial well-being. Now it’s a desire to be safe riding an elevator or boarding an airplane, and we are ready to sacrifice some of our privacy and control to have that secure feeling.

There is already a public call for the technologies used to predict response, profitability and risk to be employed to make us all more secure. Commentators are demanding the government use data mining to profile individuals to catch the bad guys. As we all know, data mining only works if one has data. Many believe that data exists in our files that will protect society.

Yes, we have data. We know where people live today and where they lived yesterday. We know what they bought and when they bought it. We know who they bought it from. But this information has some untested value in helping us understand the people who commit the crimes that make us feel unsafe. Although the data is good enough to model response, is it reliable enough to predict who is a suicide bomber?

The civil liberty issues raised by using transactional information are huge, and should not be discussed frivolously. Law enforcement and the governments they serve have power, and absolute power leads to abuse. While we have fears about that power, today we have greater fears about life and limb. We need a balance between our customers’ collective desire to be more secure today and their desire for security and autonomy tomorrow. The balancer is due process, and the industry must work with civil liberties organizations — like the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, as well as law enforcement — to define the due process package that meets our customers’ needs.

This also requires that the DMA revisit its long-held value that marketing information only be used for marketing. That concept has served the industry well but has never been an absolute. And what is the definition of marketing information anyway? Is it any information in a database used for marketing, or is it information collected from a marketing transaction? Does it include contact information or just the transaction data?

We need to update this principle so it again gives appropriate guidance to the industry. Our proprietary interests must be secondary to our desire for our customers to feel secure both today and tomorrow.

Greater Visibility

The expansion of CRM technology has generally been invisible to consumers. As law enforcement will make use of those tools, it will become more apparent to the public, increasing scrutiny of marketing uses of information.

Since midsummer, I have believed the approach to privacy issues was moving from a focus on data control to fairness. We will see this at the Federal Trade Commission, where chairman Timothy Muris has said the Fair Credit Reporting Act is the model of effective privacy legislation. The FCRA legislates use and fairness, not limitations on collection. Permissible uses are defined and fairness protections are required, including consumer access and rights of correction.

Law enforcement’s adoption of our methods and data creates an obligation for us to explain in more detail than ever before how we use information. We must educate the public about how CRM brings value to them. We have to explain how data mining leads to new products and services along with increased personalization. The direct marketing industry must embrace a consumer education revolution that will allow it to communicate to every individual at the depth of detail each consumer defines for himself or herself.

These trends were already in place. Rather than slowing down the process, government’s use of our methods will create a different sort of trajectory: It will be like a roller coaster.

First we’ll climb a slight incline that will slow external privacy demands. Once we crest that first hill, however, we’ll be in for massive acceleration.

We must take steps to manage the speed of change. Anything less will cause derailment and turmoil.

Marty Abrams is executive director of the Center for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams, Atlanta.