A new report from the Communication Workers of America Union links off-shoring call-center jobs to identity theft and other security risks.
The report points out specific instances of fraud that are directly related to employees at overseas call centers. It also claims there's a lack of national legal safeguards to protect personal information in these locations. The report raises the issue of how Americans lose their Constitutional protection for personal data once it leaves U.S. shores and says the trend of “sub-outsourcing" former Indian-based call center work to even cheaper foreign labor markets is something about which we should all be concerned.
The CWA says the report underscores the importance of the bipartisan legislation introduced in Congress last week that would ban taxpayer dollars in the form of federal grants or guaranteed loans to American companies that move call-center jobs overseas.
“If American companies insist on taking American jobs overseas, American taxpayers should not be subsidizing corporate greed," said CWA Chief of Staff Ron Collins. “This report spotlights not only the risks of a consumer’s personal information floating around foreign call centers, but the fact that a U.S. citizen’s constitutional rights preventing the illegal search and seizure of his or her data evaporate once it leaves the country."
Collins noted that though India passed new data privacy laws this year, the Indian government specifically exempted outsourcing companies from having to comply.
“Even worse, in the Philippines, where a significant amount of Indian work has been sub-outsourced, there are virtually no data protection laws, including data breach notification laws," Collins said.
