keeping. Records about people are becoming both more ubiquitous and more important in everyday life. The number of organizations performing service and control functions is growing. In many cases, the scale of their operations virtually assures that the individuals they affect will be known to them only through the contents of systematically maintained records. A new technology is also demonstrating its potential to accommodate radical growth in organizational record-keeping operations. Yet society currently affords little protection for an individual who is the subject of a record, unless some commercial or property interest in involved. The following chapters represent our effort to demonstrate why this situation deserves immediate attention and to recommend a course of action that, we believe, constitutes an appropriate societal response to the problems at hand. The potency of these data does not lie in their voluminousness, even where the assembled information does provide something like a full sketch of the person concerned. Rather, the strength of the data stems from its ability to bear meaningfully, unambiguously and quickly on decision-making problems faced by the systems. Specifically, the files are most useful where they enable the system quickly and unerringly to single out the minority of their clients who warrant some measure of social control. In their most refined form, these discrimination procedures involve highly subtle judgements, often predictive ones about the client's future behaviour, based on imaginative and interpretive use of the discrete facts on file. The press for economy in the compilation of data is matched in the patterns of its application to social control. Any of these systems can, for example, dispatch a representative expressly to accost delinquent clients; but as a regular measure this technique is difficult and expensive. Instead, the emerging pattern appears to be the extension of possible points of routine contact with the clientele, points through which clients must pass for their own purposes. At these points, the systems seek to develop means of quick identification and rapid information flow to enable them to bring the full weight of people's records to bear in decision-making about them-and, where necessary, in action against them. As the inducements to place oneself in touch with these points becomes more potent, the efficiency of these operations increases. James B. Rule, Private Lives and Copyright © 1973 by James B. Rule. Published in London by Allen Lane, a Division of Penguin Books Ltd. 508-625 O-73-4 II Latent Effects of Computer- The dangers latent in the spread of computer-based personal-data record keeping stem, in our view, from three effects of computers and computer-related technology on an organization's recordkeeping practices. • Computerization enables an organization to enlarge its data-processing capacity substantially. • Computerization greatly facilitates access to personal data within a single organization, and across boundaries that separate organizational entities. • Computerization creates a new class of record keepers whose functions are technical and whose contact with original suppliers and ultimate users of personal data are often remote. These three effects on personal-data record-keeping are seldom observed in isolation from one another. Indeed, they are usually interdependent and may acquire a self-reinforcing momentum. The discussion that follows is focused on their potentially adverse consequences for individuals, for organizations, and for the society as a whole. It concentrates on aspects of computer-based record keeping that highlight the influence of the technology, but also recognizes that organizational objectives, bureaucratic behavior, and public attitudes account in part for many of the potentially undesirable effects we have identified. Too Much Data The bare statement that computerization enables an organization to enlarge its capacity to process information deserves amplification. Although the computer enables a large organization to handle more data, the cost of changing from a manual to an automated operation may practically compel a smaller organization to exploit its data-processing capacity more fully. The cost of setting up an automated system includes not only that of equipment and special facilities, but also the cost of system analysis and design, of writing and testing computer programs, and of converting manual records into computer-accessible form. Thus, the manager of a newly automated system may have a strong economic incentive to spread the initial cost over as large a data-processing volume as he can, and to economize wherever possible in providing services that do not make a direct contribution to the efficient operation of the system itself. A typical result of this condition is that clients receive erroneous bills, unjustified dunning letters, duplicate magazine subscriptions, and countless other symptoms of inadequate system design and operation. Although these may be more a nuisance than a threat, they contribute heavily to the popular image of computerization as an offending and intrusive phenomenon. The annoyance factor is worth more attention than many system managers give it. Resentment engendered in customers at the mercy of a computerized billing system, for example, spills over onto other computer operations, making unemotional discussion of computerization in fundamentally more significant contexts diffi cult. An early incentive to concentrate on efficiency may also foster a tendency to behave as though data management were the primary goal of a computer-based record-keeping operation. When this Occurs, unnecessary constraints may be placed on the gathering, processing, and output of data, with the result that the system becomes rigid and insensitive to the interests of data subjects. A commonly observed tendency in these situations is to make the data subject do as much of the data collection work as possible by forcing him to decide how to fit himself into a highly structured, but limited set of data categories (e.g., "Please check one of the following boxes."). This can be a way to cut down errors in transcribing data from one form of record to another, but when done solely in the interest of economy the system may well sacrifice flexibility and accuracy. It is true that data compression and "shorthand" record entries did not originate with the computer; ill-adapted categorization has been the bane of bureaucracy for generations. However, manual record keeping can, at the stroke of a pen, take account of data that do not fit comfortably into pre-conceived categories, while a computer record is not usually amenable to any sort of annotation that was not expressly planned for in the design of the system. The relative inflexibility of computer-based record keeping, coupled with the constraints that some automated systems put on the freedom of data subjects to provide explanatory details in responding to questions, contributes to the so-called "dehumanizing" image of computerization. A recent occurrence in France illustrates how the inflexibility of an automated personal data system can adversely affect large numbers of people. The computer facility of the national family allotment system, which disburses some $600 million annually to 700,000 families in the Paris area, succumbed to the confusion created by changes in the allotment rate for nonworking wives, young people, and the handicapped. Efforts to unravel the difficulty were unsuccessful, and the computer center had to be reorganized as a manual operation in order to clear up an enormous backlog of emergency allotment payments. The disruption of human lives resulting from the inability to use the computer-based payments system was undoubtedly great and demonstrates why the difficulty of making even minor changes in the computer programs of a complex system gives cause for concern. Human bureaucracies exhibit similar rigidities, but their procedures can usually be changed by management directive, often by a simple promulgation of rules, and in a reasonably short time. In computer systems, how 1New York Times, January 26, 1973, p. 4. |