With ChoicePoint and LexisNexis in the news due to accusations of data theft, you may have asked yourself, "Is my personal information out there for some company to steal?"
According to Robert O'Harrow, the answer is probably "yes." In No Place to Hide, O'Harrow, an investigative reporter for the Washington Post, shows how vulnerable our personal information is in a post-9/11 world. He also gets inside the companies that have become major players in the business of data gathering and intelligence.
Take, for instance, Acxiom, a data service company that manages and collects personal information taken from magazine subscription surveys, voter registration cards, and information provided by major retailers. Where does this information go? As O'Harrow explains, Acxiom, like ChoicePoint, is a major vendor not only for the U.S. government, but also for giants like Condé Nast. The data can be used for business purposes—for market research, tracking buyer behavior and—for Homeland Security—targeting potential terrorists.
What can managers gain from this book? Access to a brief history and future predictions on data collection; a look inside different technologies like RFID that are making it easier to track everything from products and shipments to John Smith's morning coffee run; a leg up on the competition. (O'Harrow got access to a lot of top companies, IBM for one, and gives a peek into the latest technologies they are using.)
As he discovered, "More than ever before, the details about our lives are no longer our own. They belong to the companies that collect them, and the government agencies that buy or demand them in the name of keeping us safe." Enjoying lucrative contracts and the latest high-tech innovations, this is one area of information technology that is really breaking ground.—Sara Grant