Caught in the WWWeb: Privacy and the control over personal information in the e -commerce environment

This study of the economic value of personal information in e-commerce and social life attempts to reconceptualize the issue of privacy as a question of control of personal information flows in social relations. The lens of privacy serves as a valuable mechanism for examining the structure of e-commerce, since individual control over personal information is regarded in conventional human rights analysis as a key benchmark for assessing the structures of freedom and individual rights within a social system. Utilizing a socio-cultural analysis of public policy, the study demonstrates that e-commerce policies in the period from 1994 through 2000 have tended to diminish prevailing standards of individual privacy within the U.S. A pattern is identified in the policy conceptualization and treatment of personal information flow that is instructive for its implications for the development of private rights in a democratic society. The theoretical approach employs Jacques Ellul's concept of technique and Anthony Giddens' "rules and resources" to identify four distinct patterns of personal information flow that individually and collectively determine the base of individual privacy in e-commerce. One pattern reveals that, while e-commerce techniques are increasingly automated, privacy protections tend to be non-systematic and laborious. Second and related to this finding of skewed automation, the same e-commerce techniques increasingly appear integrated with each other to create a system of e-commerce techniques. A third pattern identified by the study is the erosion of individual control from the lack of boundaries or set aside aspects of personal information flow. Finally, the trend of the proliferation of multiple and distinct privacy regimes exacerbates the first three patterns that together diminish levels of individual privacy. This fourth pattern suggests that an individual attempting to exercise control over personal information would need to learn the practices and policies for each commercial or institutional website with which transactions are undertaken. Together, these four patterns of personal information flow detail a specific, coordinated, and increasingly efficient system of personal information flow within e-commerce whereby the individual user would need to engage in a systematic struggle to define personal privacy preferences.