| 摘要 | Public fears about privacy have led to a wave of well-intentioned, but often disturbing, laws and regulations. These federal and state enactments restrict the collection and use of information by the private sector. They also limit access to government sources of information, such as public records.
The rush to “do something” about privacy ignores the fact that, as the Federal Reserve Board wrote in 1997, the availability of information and the free-flow of data “are the cornerstone of a democratic society and market economy.” In short, there are real costs to restricting access to information. When less information is available, businesses have to spend more to market their products and services. Credit and other financial decisions are less accurate, and therefore result in more defaults. Identity theft and other fraud-related losses increase. Customer records are more expensive to update (to keep up with, for example, the 42 million Americans who move every year).
In fact, a series of recent studies has demonstrated that the annual cost to consumers of limiting information flow is in the tens of billions of dollars.
Complying with complicated new regulations further increases the cost of privacy. The recently adopted federal health privacy rules, for example, are calculated to cost between $25 billion and $43 billion for the first five years–three to five times more than the entire industry spent on preparations for Y2K.
In addition to higher prices, consumers will bear these costs in many ways. For example, because lenders rely on credit information collected from diverse sources over time, they provide more loans to a wider range of people. Between 1956 and 1998, number of US households with mortgages more than trebled.
If the collection or use of that information is restricted, lenders will respond as they have in other countries by reducing the number and range of people to whom they will lend. A 2000 World Bank study, for example, showed that restrictive privacy laws would eliminate 11 out of every 100 people who currently qualify for mortgages, credit cards, and other loans. Such laws, therefore, run the risk of denying economic opportunity to tens of millions of American consumers.
Privacy laws also interfere with other, noneconomic benefits of accessible information. This is especially true of laws and executive orders closing historically open public records, like motor vehicle, property tax, and bankruptcy files.
Access to that information–which the public has paid to collect–is central to monitoring government activities. For example:
The Associated Press used Social Security numbers to match Mississippi Department of Correction and Department of Education records to discover eight school teachers who had failed to report that they had been convicted of crimes, including drug dealing and sex offenses.
The St. Petersburg Times searched public records to discover that a man running for city treasurer had not disclosed that he had filed for personal bankruptcy three times and corporate bankruptcy twice, and that the new director of a large arts organization that solicited donations had been charged with fraud in his home state.
Tampa’s News Channel 8 mapped the location of all drug arrests to uncover a narcotics ring across the street from an elementary school.
In fact, a recent study by Professor Brooke Barnett of Elon College found that journalists routinely use public records not merely to check facts, but to generate stories. According to that study, 64 percent of all crime-related stories, 57 percent of all city or state stories, 56 percent of all investigative stories, and 47 percent of all political campaign stories rely on public records.
Access to public record databases, Barnett writes, is “a necessity for journalists to uncover wrongdoing and effectively cover crime, political stories and investigative pieces.”
Public records are also used to locate missing family members, owners of lost or stolen property, organ and tissue donors, suspects and witnesses in criminal and civil matters, tax evaders, and parents who are delinquent in child support payments.
Firestone and Ford Motor Company used public records to identify and obtain current addresses for people who needed to receive information on replacing defective tires. Privacy laws might restrict these beneficial uses of information, and therefore threaten not only our economic prosperity, but other critical interests as well.
Ironically, many so-called privacy laws actually enhance government access to personal information. Recent financial and health privacy rules, for example, allow the government to inspect our most intimate information, despite our constitutional right to protection from unreasonable searches.
The government has also exempted itself (and the not-for-profit community) from most restrictions on junk mail and telemarketing. And, as the Globe has reported, the government has expanded its use of cameras to monitor citizens at stop lights, sporting events, and even on city streets.
Before lawmakers enact any more laws restricting information flows or closing public records, they should ensure that the government is living up to its obligation to respect citizen privacy. And they should be honest with us about the price we are being forced to pay.
Fred Cate is a visiting scholar at AEI. |
