Editor's Notes-The Privacy Dilemma

By Donna Loyle

For some unfathomable reason, I've become interested in the issue of online and off-line privacy. I actually don't have strong personal feelings about the topic; rather, I'm more fascinated with how our culture is grappling with the issue of data privacy during this era of the Networked Society.

To learn more about the topic, I attended the Privacy and Data Security Summit in Washington, D.C., in January. Sponsored by the International Association of Privacy Officers, the second-annual conference offered educational seminars to help executives navigate their way through the minefield that has become customer data gathering and sharing. The list of federal privacy regulations that govern U.S. corporations reads like an alphabet soup—GLB (finance), HIPAA (healthcare), COPPA (children's privacy) and more.

Conference attendees (primarily corporate lawyers) hailed mostly from large and multinational corporations such as Disney, Toyota and Prudential. Additionally, representatives from regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department were there to warn attendees that the Bush Administration won't tolerate consumer privacy breaches by corporations. "A veiled threat" were the words that came to my mind as I sat in the audience.

When asked what credible corporations can do when they discover that employees have compromised customers' privacy, one speaker reminded us of an age-old adage that I found more pertinent today than ever: "Tell your employees—and keep reminding yourself—not to do anything at work that you wouldn't want to see reported on the cover of The New York Times." Of course this truism applies not only to privacy practices but to general business initiatives, too.

As this issue of Catalog Success went to press, the Enron scandal still dominated the headlines. News reports are featuring pictures of Enron officials testifying with worried grimaces in front of incredulous—even hostile—legislators. And in January, Eli Lilly settled with federal officials regarding an online consumer privacy complaint after a junior-level employee of the pharmaceutical firm inadvertently sent an e-mail that exposed the names of registrants to the company's Prozac Web site. The settlement amount was undisclosed, but the rumor mill at the Privacy Summit was that it was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Do these privacy debates mean we're about to embark on a new era of Big Brother paranoia, or is this simply the logical outcome of an economy built on shared information?

These certainly are interesting—and challenging—times for business.