African Americans and Privacy

Abstract

In January 1991, Lotus Development Corporation announced its intention to abandon efforts to develop a new software product because of what it understood to be a groundswell of public opposition. This product, Lotus Marketplace, was to have provided its customers with personal information about the resources and habits of the members of some 120 million U.S. households. The sorts of information Lotus would supply were already easily attainable from a host of information suppliers serving the direct marketing industry, but what made the Lotus product different was that it would be available on CD-ROM disks, which could be searched by anyone with an Apple Macintosh computer, a video-disc player, and $695 for the first 5,000 names. Lotus and its partner, Equifax, had apparently lost an early battle in what promises to be a hotly contested war to determine who has the right to control the collection, sharing, and use of personal information. The contemporary debate about privacy takes place in the context of substantial changes in the structure of the American political economy. The effort to rationalize the production, distribution, and sale of goods and services has involved the widespread computerization of many of the routine processes involved in these spheres. The coordination of these increasingly complex systems has come to require the collection, storage, and use of unimaginable amounts of information-much of which is information about identifiable individuals. Modem telecommunications systems provide for reli-