Corporate Perspectives on the Panoptic Sort
This chapter is focused on understanding the similarities and differences within the corporate sectors actively engaged in the development and use of the panoptic sort in support of their business ventures. The chapter focuses on three central actors of the time: the American Express Corporation, a dominant data services provider; TRW, a major defense contractor; and Equifax, an emerging giant in the provision of information about credit worthiness and other assessments of financial worth. Additional attention is focused on the special role played by a market auxiliary, the Direct Marketing Association, which played a central role in defending the industry against privacy laws and regulations emerging on the horizon. An additional effort to understand the corporate perspective on surveillance and the pursuit of power and influence made use of a survey of Fortune 500 companies at the time. Despite the quite low participation rate of the members of this special class, characteristics of their marketing techniques, their concerns about government regulation, and their assignment of responsibility for the development of a regulatory response were subject to analysis. It was not surprising to see how concerned they actually were about a consumer backlash against their collection and use of transaction-generated information.