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A L S O__T O D A Y
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Which programs do you keep open all day long? Discuss the apps you can't live without in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk
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R E C E N T L Y
A bug too far
Master of allusion New life for old buzzwords The 21st Challenge No. 12: HTTP say what? Is it sex, or is it art? - - - - - - - - - -
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BY DAVID CASSEL | In 1994, a 19-year-old customer service representative for Netcom, the Internet service provider, received a disturbing phone call: One customer had seen another threaten suicide in an Internet chat room. "At that point, our customer service person pulled up the file on the customer by the user name," remembers Laura Crowley, Netcom's public relations manager, "and was able to call the local police department within that location and disperse them out to that location ... They were able to go in and prevent that from happening." It's rare, Crowley says -- but it does happen. Ed Hansen faced a similar situation in the spring of 1995 when he was doing technical support for MindSpring. Back when the company had just 20 employees -- all working in the same room -- he took a call about a MindSpring customer who had been playing a game of chess using Internet chat facilities. "He began to suffer chest pains and he noted that to the person he was playing with -- and he stopped typing." Hansen, who now works as MindSpring's public relations manager, says, "We determined it was probably a good thing to contact emergency services in the town the gentleman lived in." When sudden crises arise on the Net -- for instance, when people threaten to kill themselves -- what should a service provider do? And how, in such situations, can companies do the right thing without running roughshod over their commitment to their customers' privacy? Crowley points out Netcom gave the police only an address, because "we have a fine line that we walk here due to the privacy issues associated with customer data." "I don't think there's any one right answer to this -- but as long as MindSpring and Netcom are communicating to their clients that they're going to do something like this, that's fine," says Mike Godwin, staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, though he emphasizes that EFF itself hasn't taken a formal position on the issue. "When you protect your client's privacy, the risk is that you're not going to prevent them from committing suicide. But there's a larger good here that I think you have to pursue. The flip side is, what happens when a harasser or some stalker says, 'I can have the police at your door within an hour' and does so -- by calling America Online and saying, 'There should be a suicide watch on that woman!'" N E X T__P A G E .|. Dramatic rescues |
