British Telecom and dePHORMative social responsibility

Back in my RAND days, I wrote the following in a report for BT's corporate social responsibility unit:

"Private parties seem relatively insensitive to the consequences of, for example, privacy breaches and phishing. This lack of response and recognition by those closest to the risks can undermine such ‘public goods’ as the rule of law to international economic competitiveness. Private parties are not taking the actions necessary to minimise the risks at 'ground level' and do not see the risks as justifying the civil liberties consequences of legal action. This in turn can undermine trust in the online economy and thus harm competitiveness."

Recent revelations about Livingston and Galvin attitudes to PHORM, and contempt for customer privacy - back in 2007, exactly as we were writing these words, reveal just how useless CSR reports appear to be....

On the brighter side, the NoDPI campaign seems to illustrate "The vulnerabilities and risks associated with distributed data could inhibit economic growth and participation, but could equally trigger a multi-stakeholder response" i.e. consumer revulsion!