Sorry, You Can't Afford It
Sydney Morning Herald
Sunday August 19, 1990
CANBERRA: Debt collectors believe that in the not too distant future there will be "total knowledge" about all individuals and envisage the Government allowing financiers to build enormous data banks which would include confidential tax file number information.
In fact, they believe banks and other lenders will have so much information that debt collectors will be made redundant.
The Orwellian vision is contained in an article "Back to the Future for Commercial Agents", published in the Institute of Mercantile Agents' journal, The Mercantile Agent.
Its author, Mr Norman Owens, a former president of the institute and owner of a debt-collecting agency, told the Herald that governments would one day see it as "desirable" to link together and make public all the enormous data bases containing highly sensitive personal information.
"Tomorrow's credit grantor will be extending credit in a perfect market with total knowledge of the debtor," Mr Owens asserted.
"The credit grantor in the future will have access to all the debtor information. This will be made available through linked data bases in the manner of George Orwell's 1984."
Credit cards will be of the "smart card" variety which will be "genetically engineered implants" that capture all transactions from cradle to grave. (In fact, Westpac is working on a smart card which has a small computer chip that records all transactions and makes credit cards more secure.)
Credit files, like those held by the Credit Reference Association, will be linked to the Government's tax file number data base.
"Some time in the future," he told the Herald, "mercantile agents won't exist."
This is because there would be total knowledge about every individual including assets, income, credit history, and any future liabilities.
"The debt collector exists to catch those debtors that escape the creditor's receivable system. For most part the holes in that system will disappear in a business society armed with perfect knowledge about all transactions," he said.
Mr Owens conceded that this may sound like science fiction, but insisted that it was "science possible".
He acknowledged that the community was horrified by such Orwellian plans and said the Government was adamantly opposed to it, but he was confident that one day people and governments would realise that such measures were of benefit to society.
© 1990 Sydney Morning Herald