Not good enough

The media perform an essential role as sources of information for all the members of our increasingly complex societies end economies. The relationship between all kinds of organisations, public or private, and the media is not always easy – nor is it meant to be. But it is critical for the workings of our societies that both sides strive to make the information conveyed relevant, clear and objective. These thoughts came to my mind as I was reading some recent news in the local press. BNU is requesting its customers, as the law on private data protection requires, to allow them to share their information with the corporate owners in Portugal. There is nothing extraordinary in that. But as we read the news, several concerns pop up. They become more disquieting the more one reads. It is never specified what kind of information we are talking about. Personal data, we are told; but its exact scope is not well defined. Personal data can be just customer identification, or all the data related to a customer that the bank possesses. It’s vague. Is the request restricted to some types of data, or is it an open-ended request for any kind of information that the bank holds or will ever hold on the customer, known or unknown to the latter? Is the authorisation assumed to be perpetual? Can it be revoked? One justification the bank invokes for the request amounts to a general principle of good banking governance –‘Know your customer’. It seems somewhat odd as one has to assume that BNU knows their customers. If not, transmitting their information – or lack thereof – to any entity outside is unlikely to be of much use. Another mentions the need to disclose customer information for the purpose of ‘consolidated supervision.’ There seems to be no effort to inform the public or the customers about what exactly is meant by that supervision, or the nature of individual customers’ information. And will other banks be under the same obligations? Other aspects might be mentioned, but a full dissection of the matter is beyond the purpose here. On a sensitive topic, where many public and private, collective and individual interests cross and, at times, collide, the news failed somehow. One side seems to have made no effort to go as far as it could; the other failed to demand as much as it should. The result is, I dare to say, unsatisfactory.