[biztech-discussion] Re: Offshoring -- Privacy Issues

  • From: Bruce Hartford <bruceh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: biztech-discussion@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, biztech-discussion@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:54:33 -0500

At 05:06 AM 7/7/04 -0700, Nancy Mulvany wrote:

>However, we no longer feel that this particular issue deserves to 
>standalone with a white paper, FAQ, etc. Personally I am very concerned, 
>alarmed, and discouraged by the amount of personal information that is sent 
>outside the United States to countries that are beyond the legal reach of 
>our privacy protection laws. However, I do not see this as a "writer's issue."

I agree it is a citizen's issue rather than a writer-specific issue. For
that matter, government support and usage of offshoring is also a "general"
rather than a writer-specific issue. It seems to me that offshoring as an
issue is so broad, and the writer-specific comonponent of it is so tiny in
economic terms (though, of course, not in its affect on our members), that
*any* effective campaign is going to have to be on the general rather than
the specific. And it will have to be fought in alliance and cooperation
with other unions and organizations, rather than independently by us on
writer-specific grounds. 

I believe that right now we (the broad general "we") are all caught up in
an economic-ideologic offshoring tidal wave. The "offshoring is good for
you" mantra has been accepted and is being repeated everywhere, even by
people who are losing their jobs. It's like a form of mass hysteria, a
mental stampede as it were. But in order to rein in offshoring (to say
nothing of stopping it), we first have to build a broad popular consensus
that offshoring is NOT good for everyone, and is NOT the greatest thing
since sliced bread (which I also don't like). So before we can do anything
else, we *first* have to get our members, and our target constituency, and
the public at large to begin questioning the so-called benefits of
offshoring. The way to do that is to attack offshoring at its two most
vulnerable points--government using our tax dollars to offshore jobs and
data security. 

Once folks begin to question those two limited aspects of offshoring it
then become possible to raise other less obvious problems with offshoring. 

In terms of reining in this mad rush to offshore everything, I believe that
our only hope is to *first* win legislation restricting offshoring of
personal data and limiting offshoring of government work paid for with our
tax dollars, and *then* expand that legislation to other areas. 

So, I do believe that focusing on these two spearate issues, and developing
materials on them, it needed. I think it would be much better to keep these
two issues separate as a kind of one-two punch than to try merging them
together. 

                                                                                
--bruce




>I think it may make more sense to fold some of the material I have gathered 
>in Bruce Hartford's drafts for the "Stop Government Support for Offshoring 
>Our Jobs" campaign.
>
>What do you think about this? Have we lost our focus? Or, would it best to 
>work with Bruce?
>
>-nancy
>
>Nancy Mulvany 


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