Mari Frank Interviews Dr. Alan Westin, Privacy Expert, Professor, Author

Dr. Alan F. Westin is Professor of Public Law and Government Emeritus at Columbia University; former Publisher of Privacy & American Business; and former President of the Center for Social & Legal Research. He is the author or editor of 26 books on constitutional law, civil liberties and civil rights, privacy, and American politics, and has been listed in Who's Who in America for three decades. In 2005, Dr. Westin received the Privacy Leadership Award of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the leading U.S. organization of business, government, and non-profit privacy officers. Professor Westin's major books on privacy -- Privacy and Freedom (1967) and Databanks in a Free Society (1972) -- were pioneering works that prompted U.S. privacy legislation and helped launch global privacy movements in many democratic nations in the 1960's and 70's. He has also specialized in studying the impact of information technologies on national and local governmental operations, from decision-making to citizen services and freedom of information administration, illustrated by his 1971 book, Information Technology in a Democracy. Over the past forty years, Dr. Westin has been a member of U.S. federal and state government privacy commissions and an expert witness before legislative committees and regulatory agencies. These activities cover privacy issues in financial services, credit and consumer-reporting, direct marketing, health care, telecommunications, employment, law enforcement, online and interactive services, survey research, and social-services. Dr. Westin has been a privacy consultant to many U.S. federal, state, and local government agencies and government research foundations. These include the Departments of Commerce and Energy, the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety, the General Services Administration, the National Bureau of Standards, Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Science Foundation, the New York State Identification and Intelligence System, and SEARCH: The National Consortium o f State Criminal Justice Information Systems. He has consulted on privacy and helped write privacy codes for over one hundred companies, including IBM, Security Pacific National Bank, Equifax, American Express, Citicorp, Bell Atlantic, Intel, Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Prudential, Bank of America, Chrysler, A.T.&T., SmithKline Beecham, News Corporation, VISA, Merck, and Glaxo Wellcome. He has also spoken about privacy at more than 800 national and international business and industry and scholarly meetings since the late 1960's, as well as appearing on hundreds of national and international television programs. He has keynoted privacy conferences around the world, from Canada to England, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Japan and Hong Kong. Between 1978 and 2008, he has been the academic advisor to Louis Harris & Associates (now Harris Interactive) for more than 50 national surveys of public and leadership attitudes toward consumer, employee, and citizen privacy issues, in the United States, Canada, Germany, Britain and Japan. He has also done 20 planning and proprietary privacy surveys for companies, generally with Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, N.J. In 1993, Dr. Westin founded Privacy & American Business, a non-profit think tank that provided expert analysis and a balanced voice on business-privacy issues. P&AB published a bi-monthly newsletter; conducted an annual national conference in Washington on "Managing The Privacy Revolution"; and led a Corporate Privacy Leadership Program and a Global Business Privacy Policies Project. P&AB also managed privacyexchange.org - a global Internet web site on consumers, commerce, and data protection worldwide, covering privacy developments in over 100 nations. The Center finished its work in the Fall of 2006. Also in 1993, Dr. Westin founded - along with Washington attorney Robert R. Belair - the Privacy consulting Group (PCG). This is now the oldest privacy-consulting boutique in the U.S. Its clients include leading financial services, telecommunication, pharmaceutical, health-care, and Internet firms. Current clients include Google, Boeing, and Yahoo! PCG leads the Center for Strategic Privacy Studies and Programs as well as the Program on Electronic Health Records and Privacy. PCG also partners with Harris Interactive on surveys dealing with consumer, employee, and citizen privacy.