August 25, 2006 -- Don't eat the daisies -- among other things

Carlton Vogt's

Enterprise Ethics

Volume 4 Number 20 August 25, 2006

Don't eat the daisies -- among other things

Some things should go without saying -- unfortunately many don't

A few years ago -- and I'm showing my age here -- author Jean Kerr, wife of theater critic Walter Kerr and the mother of four young boys, wrote a hit novel (later a movie) about the tribulations of being a suburban mom.

A key anecdote in the novel told of an incident where she was preparing the house for company and had given the four energetic boys an extensive list of dos and don'ts. She was quite proud of their restraint until she went into the living room and saw that someone had chewed all the flowers. When she confronted one of the boys, he responded that she hadn't told them: Don't eat the daisies -- the title of the book, movie, and, if I remember correctly, a pretty obnoxious popular song.

The merits of the song notwithstanding, the underlying principle remains the same. There are some things that should go without saying. We don't need long, extruded arguments to get us to the right answer -- or if not to get us to the right answer, at least to steer us away from the wrong one.

The first issue that comes to mind here is the recurrent nightmare in which we learn that someone -- either in corporate life or in the government -- has taken a boatload of personal and sensitive data, including just the sorts of things that identity thieves need to succeed, loaded it all on a laptop, and then left the laptop lying on the front seat of their car or forget to pick it up when they walked away from the airport coffee shop with their latte.

(As I was putting the finishing touches on the column, I read that Sovereign Bank officials have warned customers that not one, not two, but three company laptops with customers' personal data were stolen from three different workers after being left in vehicles.)

You don't have to be a genius to realize that secure data should be kept, pardon the expression, secure. Laptops aren't secure. They're easily lost or misplaced. They are attractive to thieves. And, even if recovered, no one knows what's happened to the data during the time the machines went missing.

I've talked about this before, and nothing has really changed. My data is still valuable to me -- as well as to thieves. Companies and public agencies that collect the data acquire an obligation to me to keep that data safe. And people with access to this data don't seem to be catching on.

This leaves us with two choices. They're either incredibly stupid -- or they just don't care. It really doesn't matter which you choose. People who fall into either of those two categories should not have access to sensitive information. The problem, instead of shrinking over time, seems to be growing -- witness the Sovereign Bank experience -- although I'm willing to admit that it could just be more rigorous reporting of the losses that make it seem to be growing.

What is more alarming is that companies and agencies don't seem to have policies in place to prevent this sort of occurrence. Even if there is some reason for an employee to work on sensitive data while on the road or at remote locations, there are safeguards that the company could use to minimize the chance of loss, although probably not eliminate that chance. No reputable company would allow employees to fill a shopping bag with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and then wander the streets with it. Data -- especially my personal information -- is no less valuable. That the entities that collect it should exercise prudence in handling it should go without saying.

The second thing that got my attention followed the Hairspray Hysteria that was foisted on air travelers a week or so ago. An acquaintance, in discussing the situation, informed me that the problem was that there were too many Muslims in Europe -- he actually used the term "bleeping Muslims" -- and that the way to end the problem was to "get all the Muslims out of Europe."

In what I hoped would be an understated rebuke, I simply said, "Well, that sounds to me like it would certainly be a 'Final Solution.'" From the blank look on his face, I could tell that the oblique reference to the Holocaust had gone over his head. So I took it down a notch and said "I think they tried something like that in Europe bank in the '40s, and it didn't turn out so well."

His response? "Oh, I don't know that much about European history." For those who are dismayed about the small fringe group of Holocaust deniers, you should be more worried about the unconscionably large number of people who are simply ignorant, which makes them prey to the deniers.

Ethics teachers often use the Nazis and the Holocaust when discussing evil. They are the perfect example because there are no redeeming characteristics to confuse the discussion. The whole enterprise was evil. I was stopped in my tracks one day when I was in the middle of a college lecture, and one of the better students in the class raised her hand and politely informed me that some of the students found my references confusing because they didn't know what the Nazis did that made them so bad.

But, getting back to my acquaintance and his suggestion about the Muslims in Europe, you shouldn't have to know much history to realize that it's wrong to target an entire population for elimination, whether through forced mass relocation or a more "final solution." It should go without saying.

I would be disturbed enough if it were just this one acquaintance offering this opinion, but when I related the story to a friend, he informed me that right-wing talk-radio (Yes, I appreciate the redundancy in that statement.) was rife with this suggestion. Then, we were treated to the spectacle of the current occupant of the White House talking about "Islamic fascists." This, despite the fact that there are no Muslim groups or states that have enough of the characteristics of fascism to even get them in the running for the term. The intent could only be to tar an entire religion through guilt by association.

We have also seen calls for separate (but equal, I'm sure) check-in facilities for Muslims at airports. Some have gone so far as to suggest that Muslims should be banned from flying. That would be easy, of course, because one woman claimed on a radio call-in show that she knew a Muslim when she saw one.

The trend is disturbing because it mirrors the demonization of the Jews that took place in Germany for decades after the Treaty of Versailles, creating a climate that allowed the Holocaust and its Final Solution to slip into place so easily. We shouldn't forget the lessons of that experience.

But whether it's exposing customer data to identity thieves, targeting an entire ethic or religious group for elimination or, yes, munching on the centerpiece, you shouldn't have to be told it's wrong. Some things just go without saying.