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Unit 12: Customer Privacy

commonly bought and sold today by third parties in market-like environments. The National Notes
Information Market simply gives individuals an economic stake in those transactions that they
currently do not have.

12.2.11 Personal Information

There may be information about us that we don’t want revealed just because we don’t want
people to know it. For example, many people are very touchy about personal financial
information being revealed. They don’t want other people to know how much income they
make, or how much they paid for their house or car.

In some cases there is a social interest to making such information public. Consider the following
two examples.
A computer consultant in Oregon paid the state $ 222 for its complete motor vehicles data base,
which he then posted to a Web site, prompting charges of privacy violations from people who
complained that he had invaded their privacy. The database allows anyone with an Oregon
license plate number to look up the vehicle owner’s name, address, birth date, driver’s license
number, and title information. The consultant’s motive in posting the information, which anyone
can obtain for a fee by going to a state office, was to improve public safety by allowing
identification of reckless drivers. Oregon Governor John Kitzhaver says that instant access to
motor vehicle records over the Internet is different from information access obtained by physically
going to state offices and making a formal request for information: “I am concerned that this
ease of access to people’s addresses could be abused and present a threat to an individual’s
safety.” (Associated Press 8 Aug 96)
Victoria, the first city in Canada to put its tax-assessment rolls on the Internet, has pulled the
plug after British Columbia’s Information Commissioner announced an investigation into the
practice, believing it violates privacy laws. (Toronto Globe and Mail 27 Sep 96 A3)
In each of these cases there is a public interest in having this information publicly available.
Making information available about owners of motor vehicles may help insure safer operations.
Making sales prices of houses available may help ensure the accuracy of tax assessments. My
neighbours may care about the assessment of my house, not because they particularly care
about my tax assessment, but because they care about their tax assessment.
Whether or not such information should be publicly available would ideally depend on an
individual benefit-cost analysis. If I am willing to pay more to keep my assessment private than
my neighbours would be willing to pay to see it, we have a potential way to make everyone
better off: I pay my neighbours for the right to keep my assessment private. If they value seeing
my information more than I value keeping it private, then they pay me for the right to see it.
This sort of transaction is not really practical for a variety of reasons, but the same principle
should apply in aggregate: one has to weigh the “average” potential benefits from making this
sort of information public to the potential costs of keeping it private. The presence of a market
where individuals can sell information about themselves helps provide a benchmark for such
benefit-cost calculations.

Notes Certain kinds of information can be collected and distributed without revealing
the identity of individuals. [Froomkin, 1996] explores some of the legal issues involving
anonymity and pseudonymity; see [Camp, Harkavey, Yee, & Tygar, 1996] for a computer
science view. [Karnow, 1994] proposes the interesting idea of “e-persons”, or “epers,”
which serve to provide privacy while conveying a relevant description of the individual.

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