The line between legal and illegal information selling is thoroughly vague, enforcement is minimal, public awareness is inchoate, obfuscation is rampant, and the economic incentives to collect information and to deceive people about its intended uses are massive. The next question is what can be done about this dire situation.
Predictor: Agre, Phil
Prediction, in context:The February 1994 issue of The Network Observer, an online newsletter, carries lead-in titled “The Economics of Information Crimes” by Phil Agre, TNO editor, who was, at the time, working in the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles. Agre writes:”The really important thing about the illegal information market is that it is so similar to the *legal* information market. It has much the same structure, although advertising and other market-making institutions don’t work the same way. The similarity is particular striking at the commodity end of the market – the market in personal information. In practice there is one huge industry, all of which depends on the same basically immoral device: taking information that you left behind somewhere, for some specific purpose, and diverting it to an unlimited variety of other purposes. The status of this diversion is, unfortunately, not very well defined at all, either under common law or the statutes of most countries – particularly the United States. The line between legal and illegal information selling is thoroughly vague, enforcement is minimal, public awareness is inchoate, obfuscation is rampant, and the economic incentives to collect information and to deceive people about its intended uses are massive. The next question is what can be done about this dire situation.Ó
Biography:Phillip E. Agre was an associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has been the author of research studies on the Internet. He edited The Network Observer, an online newsletter on Internet issues. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Controversial Issues
Subtopic: Crime/Fraud/Terrorism
Name of publication: The Network Observer
Title, headline, chapter name: The Economics of Information Crimes
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/tno/february-1994.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne