Page 301 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Customer Relationship Management

Notes Today, a new generation of electronic privacy problems has emerged, for several reasons:
 An increasing number of transactions are conducted electronically.
 It has become easier and cheaper to collect, store, access, match, and redistribute information
about transactions and individuals.
 Wireless transmission conduits include unsecured portions.
 The number of communications carriers and service providers has grown enormously,
leading to an increasingly open network system in which information about use and user
is exchanged as part of network interoperability.

 The Internet computer network system is wide open.
In consequence, new electronic privacy problems keep emerging. Recent controversies include:
 Intrusive telemarketing.
 Data collection about transactions.
 The ability of governments to control encryption.

 The ability to determine an incoming caller’s phone number and use of such information.
 The monitoring of wireless mobile communications.
 Employers’ monitoring of their employees.

 The ability of using e-cash for illegal transactions.
 The difficulties of law enforcement agencies to keep up with transmission technology.
 The unsecured nature of the Internet, and the ability to track the sites which an individual
visits.

And more is coming our way. For example, tiny mobile communication transceivers, together
with number portability, will enable telephone subscribers to be continuously connected. Their
location whereabouts, their comings and goings, and the identity of other persons in the same
location could, therefore, be continuously ascertained.
Given that privacy is important to so many people, and given that information technology
keeps raising new questions, what approach should be adopted to deal with privacy problems?
In the past, if remedies were considered, the primary strategy was to resort to regulation. The
call for the state to control and protect privacy is a natural response especially in the field of
electronic communications, given their history around the world as either a state-controlled
telephone or broadcast monopoly or tightly regulated sector. This has led to a view of electronic
privacy problems largely as an issue of rights versus the state or its regulated monopoly firms-
and to the question how to create such rights in the political, regulatory and legal sphere. But
such a view is static: having a right is often believed to be the end of the story. Yet in most parts
of society, the allocation of rights is only the beginning of a much more complex interaction.
Privacy is an interaction, in which the rights of different parties collide. A has a certain preference
about the information he receives and lets out. B, on the other hand, may want to learn more
about A, perhaps in order to protect herself. The controversies about caller-identification, or of
AIDS disclosure by medical personnel, illustrate that privacy is an issue of control over
information flows, with a much greater inherent complexity than a conventional “consumers
versus business,” or “citizens versus the state” analyses suggests. In this case, different parties
have different preferences on “information permeability” and need a way to synchronize these
preferences or be at tension with each other. This would suggest that interactive negotiation
over privacy would have a place in establishing and protecting privacy.

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