Outsourcing the Processing of Sensitive Information Essay -- Businesse

Outsourcing the Processing of Sensitive InformationA rate of flow trend in business in the first-world (United States and Western Europe) is for the service orbit to follow the lead of the manufacturing sector in looking to the global mart to find the lowest-cost means of production. That is, to lower costs and maximize profits, first-world service providers be increasingly seeking to outsource knowledge worker type tasks to countries with easily lower task costs. The type of work being exported includes telephone call-center support, info entry, the design and implementation of sophisticated software systems, tax preparation and monetary bookkeeping. Of particular concern to privacy advocates is that exporting the work entails transmitting private information about individuals across national boundaries. Much of this information is of a new nature and may include personal tax filings, acknowledgment history, medical history and banking records. As the premier destination f or outsourced work, much sensitive information is sent to processing companies in India, where Bank of America (soon to be the second largest bank in the United States) is setting up a subsidiary and is already one of the largest clients of Indias two largest IT consulting companies 1 3. Moreover, information is withal being sent to other countries like Jamaica, where the major credit report company Equifax has been processing information for the past four years 2. new(prenominal) countries with low labor costs, like Uruguay, Tunisia and Romania, are also being looked at as destinations for subcontracted work 4. Common to almost all countries with an educated, low-cost labor force is a general lack of a well-developed legal infrast... ... mannikin for Ethical Decision Making, 2004, www.scu.edu, 24-Apr-04, <http//www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html .11.Rachel konrad, Sending jobs offshore unfit for U.S. tax revenues, San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco 08- Apr-04 C5. 12.David Lazarus, Outsourced UCSF notes highlight privacy risk, San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco 28-Mar-04 A1. 13.Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with meet to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, www.cdt.org, 27-Apr-04, http//www.cdt.org/privacy/eudirective/EU_Directive_.html <http//www.cdt.org/privacy/eudirective/EU_Directive_.html .14.U.S. Department of Commerce, SafeHarbor, www.export.gov, 27-Apr-04, <http//www.export.gov/safeharbor/sh_overview.html .