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A student recently told me of a date she had with a law student. During dinner, he attempted to impress her by relating an array of financial and personal information about her and her family that he had obtained from commercial data banks. She was shocked not only because her privacy had been invaded, but also because this information was so readily available to those who had no real need nor right to know.(1)
Privacy is not included in the four consumer rights enunciated by President Kennedy, nor is it explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution. Yet, in this world where information voyeurism has reached the highest levels of sophistication, the privacy issue has become a significant concern for the consumer. Electronic eavesdropping technology has evolved to the point where it has a profound impact on consumer's rights to accurate information and the consumer's right to efficient choice.
Personal privacy as challenged by electronic eavesdropping is the issue that David Lyon addresses in The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society. Lyon, an associate professor of sociology at Queens University, Ontario, Canada, has written another book on this topic, The Information Society. Although the primary focus of The Electronic Eye is not consumer welfare as narrowly defined, Lyon's discussion often relates surveillance to the citizen role as a consumer. His book is not a report of empirical research, but a synthesis and an extrapolation of what others have written concerning technology, surveillance, and privacy.
Lyon defines electronic surveillance as pertaining to the ways that computer databases are used to store and process personal information on different populations and on individuals. He explains surveillance as a system of technologies--telecommunication networks to transmit information among databases; computers to collect,...