Outsourcing the Processing of Sensitive Information Essay -- Businesse

Outsourcing the Processing of Sensitive Information A current trend in business in the first-world (United States and Western Europe) is for the service sector to follow the lead of the manufacturing sector in looking to the global marketplace to find the lowest-cost means of production. That is, to lower costs and maximize profits, first-world service providers are increasingly seeking to outsource "knowledge worker" type tasks to countries with substantially lower labor costs. The type of work being exported includes telephone call-center support, data entry, the design and implementation of sophisticated software systems, tax preparation and financial bookkeeping. Of particular concern to privacy advocates is that exporting the work entails transmitting personal information about individuals across national boundaries. Much of this information is of a sensitive nature and may include: personal tax filings, credit history, medical history and banking records. As the premier destination for outsourced work, much sensitive information is sent to processing companies in India, where Bank of America (soon to be the second largest bank in the United States) is setting up a subsidiary and is already one of the largest clients of India’s two largest IT consulting companies [1] [3]. Moreover, information is also being sent to other countries like Jamaica, where the major credit reporting company Equifax has been processing information for the past four years [2]. Other countries with low labor costs, like Uruguay, Tunisia and Romania, are also being looked at as destinations for subcontracted work [4]. Common to almost all countries with an educated, low-cost labor force is a general lack of a well-developed legal infrast... ... Framework for Ethical Decision Making, 2004, www.scu.edu, 24-Apr-04, <http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html >. 11.Rachel konrad, "Sending jobs offshore bad for U.S. tax revenues," San Francisco Chronicle [San Francisco] 08-Apr-04: C5. 12.David Lazarus, "Outsourced UCSF notes highlight privacy risk," San Francisco Chronicle [San Francisco] 28-Mar-04: A1. 13.Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, www.cdt.org, 27-Apr-04, http://www.cdt.org/privacy/eudirective/EU_Directive_.html <http://www.cdt.org/privacy/eudirective/EU_Directive_.html >. 14.U.S. Department of Commerce, SafeHarbor, www.export.gov, 27-Apr-04, <http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/sh_overview.html >.