Privacy at what price?

The mobile phone is a truly personal piece of electronic equipment.

Every customer’s phone is unique to them. It holds:

A record of calls made, received and places visited - physically and electronically.
A store of personal data.
A log of personal identity - largely for the purposes of electronic commerce, with applications such as being able to pay London congestion charges by a text message, or download music.

We believe that a very important debate is developing about privacy, and notably the capacity of mobile phones to collect and process information about individuals.

There is already widespread public unease about the ability of governments and companies to access personal communications.

At O2, we want to understand what efforts we should make in this complex area. We sit on a fine line between protecting people’s safety, on the one hand, and their liberty, on the other.

“We exist to provide voice, text and data services for customers. The information we currently hold is from systems designed for billing purposes. The location data is a by-product and its collection and retention is not our core business. While it is right that we should co-operate with law enforcement agencies, arguably it is not our duty to go out of our way to accumulate data that we don’t need to satisfy the potential requirements of the police, trading standards officers and so on. Or should we?”

Peter Erskine, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer O2 plc, speaking at a event hosted by democracy think-tank DEMOS on crime, policing and civil liberties (2004).

During the year, we sponsored an online debate about mobile phones and privacy and we began to collate stakeholders’ views on this issue.

Read more about the debate at 'Mobile society – Do mobile phones invade our privacy'

For more information visit the following pages in our extensive online resource

Privacy at what price?

Issues in brief

O2 plc

Read related stories from: