(Original Caption) Built for the Office of Strategic Services, this tiny “M.B.” Camera- no larger than its namesake, a matchbox- could be easily hidden in a man’s hand and used to take a picture under the cloak of such a simple gesture as lighting a cigarette or reading. Eastman Kodak discloses it designed and built 1,000 of these cameras for use by OSS Agents and underground forces during World War II.
Bettmann Archive
Intently studying one’s customers is as old as business. Consumers would be miserable without keen business interest in who they are.
If they’re skeptical, they need only go shopping in Havana or Pyongyang. In businesses staffed by individuals who lack any incentive to know and anticipate customer needs, the shelves are bare. Worse, what’s on the shelves has little to do with what customers desire.
In short, customers are made better off when businesses “spy” on them. The intent isn’t nefarious, rather it’s about enhancing the customer’s experience all the while making it likely that what the customer desires will be in stock when he or she needs it.
Importantly, the ability of businesses to anticipate and lead customer needs grows by the day. The latter is made evident by the valuations investors place on technology companies relative to traditional media of the print variety. With the latter, advertising was an educated guess, but not much more. Not so with modern technology.
The internet and usage of same makes it possible for businesses to know precisely what interests each user, what turns that user off, and everything in between. The result is a greatly enhanced customer experience tailored to individuals that improves by the day. Call time spent scrolling and shopping on the internet the opposite of a shopping day in Havana or Pyongyang.
Unfortunately, the ongoing and laudatory efforts of technology companies to improve the customer experience has caught the attention of government officials eager to use what’s good in dangerous fashion. A federal government that arguably investigates individuals too much, and that does so in secret way too often, naturally wants to avail itself of the knowledge technology companies have about their customers. To which the technology companies are logically saying no thanks.
Customers are hard won, and must be tended to well. Any business owner of any size knows this well.
Which is why passage of the NDO Fairness Act is so important. Bipartisan legislation led in the Senate by Mike Lee (R-UT) and Chris Coons (D-DE), it limits the ability of the federal government to use “gag orders” to compel information about individuals from technology companies. In other words, governments will face a higher burden of proof ahead of securing information in the first place, and that burden of proof will similarly apply to officials eager to investigate individuals without disclosing to the investigated that they’re doing just that.
In addition to raising the hurdle for federal investigations sans disclosure, the Act will place stricter time limits on the “gag orders.” Government will have to request and be granted extensions of those same gag orders.
About what you’ve read, there are ongoing debates among parents and between parents about whether children need “boundaries.” With governments there’s no debate. They need them. History is clear that a lack of them leads to politicized actions that bring harm to the citizenry more broadly.
Which brings us back to technology companies. The NDO Fairness Act needs to be passed precisely because they have learned how to know and anticipate customer needs very expertly, but also very honorably. Knowing their customers well is once again all about improving the experience for those customers.
Just the same, it’s essential that government not be allowed to turn what’s good into a source of federal surveillance, and increasingly politicized surveillance. The latter isn’t just dangerous, it’s also wrong to use private business to improve the ability of government to do badly by the people. The NDO Fairness Act can’t be voted into law quickly enough.