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Cybereye | Privacy matters

Commentary: How do you put a price tag on privacy? And how do you determine who pays?

By William Jackson

In a life lived online, it is easy to get the feeling we are living in a fishbowl. But according to Information Technology and Innovation Foundation President Robert Atkinson, “We’re a hundred times more private today than we were in colonial times.”

Atkinson spoke at a forum on digital privacy hosted by Congressional Quarterly. Hyperbole aside, his point was that 200 years ago nearly everyone lived their lives in small communities where everyone was known. To concerns that a digital economy is stripping away our privacy, he responded that there have always been privacy concerns about new technology — from cameras in the 19th century to miniature electronics in the 1950s.

“We learned to live with new technology, and nothing happened,” he said. “We will learn to live with the next technology.”

To those who would turn to legislation to ensure digital privacy, he warned, “Privacy regulation is not free.” If companies are not free to gather and exploit data, innovation and competitiveness will suffer.

True, there is no free lunch. But a question not asked or answered at the forum was, who pays the price and who receives the benefit?

Atkinson speaks for the IT industry. Its position has always been that anything that costs a company costs the consumer, and anything that benefits a company benefits the consumer. This is the basic idea behind trickle-down economics, and if the current economic malaise has taught us anything, it is that trickle down does not work that simply. Just because the IT industry can find ways to profit from the data it gathers does not mean that it is a good deal for the people from whom it gathers the data.

Even if you believe that government regulation should be tried only after everything else has failed, the huge profit potential from the unfettered exploitation of personal data is a strong argument that there is a legitimate need for regulation. After all, when was the last time any industry voluntarily eschewed a profit?

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