by Ralph Nader / January 10th, 2014
You’ve heard the refrain “we live in the information age.” We
have fingertip access to the Internet, providing us with massive amounts
of information. There are no longer any excuses for us to say we don’t
have the information; it is there, but up to us to act on the
information.
The above is all true but very incomplete. Information technology
(IT), now the supplier of millions of jobs, does not have its own
value-based imperative. The power structure is very selective about what
this technology can access so as to keep the power in its concentrating
corporate and governmental hands.
For an example, you need only look to how franticly government
agencies react when whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and Edward
Snowden tear aside the curtains and reveal widespread mischief or
criminal activity.
Consider a sample of what a selective information age keeps away from
our fingertips, away from the Cloud, and away from your smartphones:
1) Consumer contracts that bind you and tie your rights and
bargaining power in knots are often not available to you. You can
sometimes see summaries of what Senator Elizabeth Warren (Dem. Mass)
calls “mice print” (multi-page contracts written in small-print
legalese), but you can’t find the entire contract behind your airline,
train or bus ticket, your insurance coverage, even your bank accounts or
other business you conduct in the marketplace. Naturally this fine
print can take you to the cleaners, exclude you from your day in court,
fine you and allow vendors to unilaterally change the terms of the
agreement.
2) As taxpayers you can get the summaries of many of the $500 billion
worth of federal contracts with corporations, but you usually can’t get
the full text online. You can get some of them if you ask and wait, but
most of the bloated or controversial contracts, such as those that are
common in the defense industry or the corporate welfare business, remain
secret or hidden.
3) Many of the products and chemicals in your food are labelled. But
lots more are not, including food from genetically engineered crops and
other ingredients known to the producers or processors.
4) Getting your full medical records that you or your insurance
company paid vendors to compile can be a real hassle. Inscrutable
lengthy medical bills, replete with codes and fraud, hide what should be
clear itemization for the patients to review. Harvard University
expert, Malcolm Sparrow, estimates that computerized billing fraud and
abuse are at least ten percent of all health care expenditures. This
year that will total over $270 billion down the drain. You would think
with all that waste they would make it easier for patients to review
their bills, but not in the selective information age.
5) Compared to a generation ago, it is hard even to get the telephone
numbers for the offices of heads of corporations. In some cases, you
can’t even telephone their secretaries and staff.
Limiting access to complaint handlers makes it difficult to complain
effectively, to receive a credit score, challenge a perceived overcharge
or any number of other problems. More problematic, is the chilling
impact of a vendor cautioning a tenacious consumer not to press too
hard, if the consumer wants to maintain his or her credit rating or
credit score.
6) Residents on a Hawaiian Island recently were repeatedly denied
information on the pesticides used by an agribusiness that were wafting
over their breathing space. The company claimed the information was a
trade secret and didn’t want to release the information because of its
potential competitors.
Abuse of the “trade secret” excuse is extensive and is often used by
government regulatory safety agencies (such as the Food and Drug
Administration) that are often sworn to secrecy when a company complies
with a request to divulge information or wants an approval to sell its
product. Toxic or likely harmful matter should never remain secret to
increase corporate profits or cover up gross recklessness.
The age of information selectivity, however, isn’t limited to the
Internet; it permeates all levels of government and corporate
operations. We now live in a time of vast government secrecy. Government
agencies often flout federal and state freedom of information laws.
Even some laws, regulations, executive orders and legal memoranda
authorizing dubious government adventures are secret. Under Presidents
George W. Bush and Barack Obama, there has been a surge of secret law,
secret courts, secret evidence, secret expenditures for violent
quagmires abroad, secret prisons, secret snooping, arrests without open
charges and even – get this– redacted or partially censored court
decisions that are publicly published.
Combine the above with secret campaign contributions through
super-PACs and it’s easy to understand former President Jimmy Carter’s
statement last year that the U.S. no longer has a functioning democracy.
At the state and local governmental level, the curse of secrecy is
rampant. In the District of Columbia, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for
Planning and Economic Development has repeatedly refused formal
requests, pursuant to the DC Freedom of Information Act, that it produce
the contracts regarding the “sale” of public properties (libraries,
fire stations, police stations, schools, etc.) to private developers. As
public contracts, the law requires them to be posted online, for public
inspection, even if there has been no request filed by a citizen.
Then there is the information that corporate executives deny their
owners – the shareholders – from having, often by citing the wildly
expansive “business judgment” rule. Sure, shareholders, with the rules
of the Securities and Exchange Commission, get reams of information, but
not much of the sensitive information about the corporate bosses
enriching themselves, making bad decisions or variously stripping the
shareholders of their ownership rights.
The examples of critical or game-changing information – well beyond
your fingertips – are legion. So let’s not wax ecstatic over the
information explosion without paying more attention to the information
implosion into the special interest caves of dark secrecy. Snares and
delusions beckon more discriminating minds free of the “gee-whiz
technotwits” who distract us with the latest information gadgets.
This article was posted on Friday, January 10th, 2014 at 4:07pm and is filed under
Consumer Advocacy,
Corruption,
Democrats,
Food/Nutrition,
Military/Militarism,
Pesticides,
Science/Technology,
Transparency/Secrecy,
Whistleblowing.
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