PR 101

Here’s a scenario for you: you are a businessman from another state, or perhaps another country. Your company is doing enough business in a particular U.S. state that you feel you should open a facility there. So, you fly in to check things out. You land in the state within the last month – the peak of the elections season.

In your hotel that night you turn on the television. For the next three hours, you see political invective spewed of that electronic box. The ads you see tell you how bad the business climate is in that state – poor education, high crime, high taxes, lousy facilities, and a government that doesn’t care. You know it might not be true, but you figure why take the chance? So, you pack your bags and go looking for another state to locate your facility and the jobs it will bring.

Too far-fetched? I wonder.

I live in Wisconsin. We are one of the key states in the 2010 election cycle. Our governor’s office is open. Republican Scott Walker is slugging out with Democratic Tom Barrett. Our incumbent senator, Russ Feingold, is fighting it out with newcomer and businessman Ron Johnson. Plus, there are several key races for House seats and the state Legislature.

We in Wisconsin are being inundated with television advertising, most of it negative. Let’s leave aside the personal attacks the candidates are making on each other. I do have say that if these candidates were five-year-olds, they would be sent to their rooms for the tantrums they are throwing.

The majority of the rest of the advertising talks about how bad things are in the Badger state. Our taxes are too high, our healthcare costs too much, our education is system is falling apart, and there is too much government regulations. Both sides say if the other side is elected, Wisconsin has roughly the same change to prosper as the Titanic did to float after it hit that iceberg.

As I said, if you are a businessperson, would you put your company here after seeing those ads?

It bothers me when one of our own does this. If I am that businessman, I am going to tend to believe the people who live here. If they tell me things are bad, who I am to argue?

Plus, if you are like me, you are cynical about any elected official’s ability to accomplish anything. So why take the chance that things might get fixed?

What particularly frosts me is the outside groups coming in and ripping my state. These are groups run by people who cannot tell you why Wisconsin loves the Packers so much, or what the difference is between a six-month-old cheddar and a six-year-old cheddar. The closest they have ever come to the Dairy State is when they land at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to change planes.

They don’t care about Wisconsin, its business climate and what they might be doing to it. All they care about is winning. Once the election is over, they are going to forget about us until 2012.

Everyone involved in the election will justify their tactics by saying what they did is for the greater good. They remind me of the Army officer during the Vietnam War who was quoted as saying “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

I was in a meeting last week with a potential client who brought up something that never occurred to me about information on the Internet. He argued that some information should never be shared, and other kinds should have an expiration date. I agree with him.

Now, if you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I constantly preach about being careful about what you post. I know of companies that require access to a potential employee’s Facebook page, Twitter stream and anything else the person has posted. Do you want a potential employer seeing those pictures of you drinking from a beer bong or making obscene gestures? I also know of companies that have refused to hire a candidate because of something they found on one of those social media sites.

The person I was talking to works in staffing. His company has been very successful in placing employees in many, many companies. He gave me examples of very qualified employees who lost on a job because of one stupid thing they posted. What particularly rankled him is that the post might have been made five years ago. As he rightly pointed out, people change and mature. The person may have changed completely, but is now haunted by something they did five years ago.

He also pointed out all of the information that be gathered about someone can be misinterpreted and misused. For instance, the state of Wisconsin maintains a website known as the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Program. It is commonly known as CCAP. What it is a list of every infraction committed by Wisconsin residents from speeding tickets to first-degree murder. It also lists divorces and other civil matters. It does not list juvenile offenses.

The staffing guy pointed out that a listing on CCAP can follow someone around for life – even if they were acquitted of the charges. He said most people either don’t read the entire entry, or don’t understand how to read it. So they don’t see that the charges were dropped. Instead, they just assume that the person is a criminal.

He made another point I found salient. If someone did commit a crime, how long do we hold that against them? I agree with that. The point of incarceration is to punish someone first and then to rehabilitate them. So once they have served their sentence and been punished, is it fair to keep punishing them by not hiring them or ostracizing them.

Now mind you, I am not talking about all of those convicted of a crime. There are some offenses are so heinous that those who committed them should never be allowed back in society. I put sex offenders, child molesters and violent criminals in that group. I would also add in those who run large criminal organizations, such as drug dealers.

To me though, it makes sense to hire people who have “paid their debt to society.” You don’t want them committing more crimes do you? That is what they are going to do if they cannot get a legitimate job. Sometimes it is a matter of survival.

The problem is that social media makes it harder for some of those people to come back into society. The information is just too easy to access. Unfortunately too many employees are just too nervous to hire someone who they find might have committed an infraction 10 or 15 years ago. It’s too easy to find that information out now.

Is that fair? I don’t think so. What I think needs to happen is greater education and some redaction of information. I don’t see anything wrong with that, do you?

You have probably read about, or heard broadcasts about how third party applications on Facebook are stealing information from users. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, applications including FarmVille, Texas Hold ‘em and FrontierVille are providing users’ names, and in some cases their friends’ names, to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies.

These actions apparently has ties to the growing field of companies that build detailed databases on people in order to track them online, the Journal reported. Using sophisticated software, these tracking companies can determine by your online behavior what movies you watch, what brand of clothes you wear, and a lot of other information you might not want others to know. Companies crave this data. They use to target sales pitches to specific consumers.

There are a lot of issues that arise from what they are doing. But to me the biggest one is the fact that they are learning far more about than they need to know. It frightens me to think what a government could do with that information. The only solution is a federal law barring the gathering and dissemination of such data.

Look, I understand that companies need to know consumer trends. It helps them produce the right amount of goods for the right markets. But that information is readily available from any retailer. Retail chains, big and small, track what sells and why. To me it would be a simple matter for those companies to sell that information to manufacturers without impinging on anyone’s privacy.

However, these companies are collecting information that is frankly none of their business. They don’t need to know whether you buy Wrangler’s or Levis. They don’t need to know which websites you visit or how long you stay there. On a personal level, they are stalking you. If you found out if a person was collecting this kind of personal information, you have them in court very quickly.

How long before a hacker breaks into one of these databases and steals all of the gathered information? This would be a gold mine for an identity thief. Not only would have they have your social security number, your passwords and your financial information. They would know all about you. They would know your likes and dislikes. At least on the Internet, they could become you completely.

Think of the potential for blackmail. Let’s say someone buys something perfectly legal from an adult website. Most people don’t that want that kind of information made public. A hacker could a person’s life hell if they found that data. Think what a politician would do with that kind of information.

Now these companies say they do not collect names or identifying information. We now know that’s not true. What else are they collecting and what’s being done with the information? There have been stories in the last couple of days about the Federal government working with cell phone companies. The government wants to make sure that changes in technology do not take away the ability to tap phones.

What’s to say that some future government administration will decide it also needs to review all of your personal information? It will be done under pretense of some great national need. Does anyone really want someone on the outside seeing how you spend your time on the net? Do you want some bureaucrat passing judgment on what you on the Internet? I thought not.

This is information should remain private. What I wish would happen is a law would be passed akin to the federal HIPPA Privacy Rule. The HIPAA Privacy Rule provides federal protections for personal health information held by covered entities and gives patients an array of rights with respect to that information, according to the Federal Department of Health and Human Services’ website.

The Privacy Rule, a Federal law, gives you rights over your health information and sets rules and limits on who can look at and receive your health information, the HHS website says.

That kind of law is the only thing that will keep our information private. Remember what Ben Franklin said: “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”