The Guardian 31 January, 2007
Call for consumer privacy rights
Attorney General Philip Ruddock’s late entry into the debate on data privacy in offshore call centres, especially in India, is too little too late said Len Cooper, Victorian Secretary of the Communication Workers’ Union. The Howard government has actively encouraged Australian business to go offshore in pursuit of lower wages and higher profits. It was somewhat inevitable that a "black market" in personal information would be the end result. Identity theft is a booming international business said Mr Cooper.
India has adopted a very weak industry standard in regards to data protection and privacy. The assurances given to the Federal Attorney General by India’s government are an even weaker response to the significant concerns of Australians about who has access to their personal, detailed information. Legislative change is also urgently needed in Australia to discourage data going offshore to low wage countries. The government cannot simply blame others when they have enacted legislation to promote the interests of big business at the expense of workers.
In the last five years a number of large, well known corporations have had to go into damage control as the private data of their customers was traded for cash. Banking giants HSBC and Citibank have already had to deal with widespread theft of customer data that resulted in financial loss from customer accounts.
Offshore call centre operators have been giving empty assurances for at least three years that they will sharpen security measures in regard to customer data, but still the problems continue.
It is fast coming to a point where consumers will choose businesses based on where their data is held and how secure that data is, said Len Cooper. Current Australian legislation provides absolutely no choice to Australians as to whether or not a company can send their information offshore while other countries impose the requirement that customers must consent to having their personal, sensitive data sent offshore.
Indian workers are no different to Australian workers, they have the same aspirations, but it is simply not acceptable that Australian consumers have to pay for the pursuit of increasing the profits of large transnational corporations at the expense of Australian consumers.