By Scott Barancik
No one doubts Klaas’s sincerity about child safety (although Polly Klaas’s killer didn’t use a mail list to find her). But Klaas and KOL’s other members, including Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Evan Hendricks of Privacy Times newsletter, seem to be in denial about one thing: their role in Phillips’s relentless war on Donnelley. Over the past five years, Phillips, cofounder and president of a 40-employee, $5 million firm, Aristotle Publishing, has battled Donnelley–a $6.4 billion firm with over 40,000 employees in 21 countries–in the courts, the media, and anywhere else he can stage a fight. Along the way, Donnelley has learned what almost everyone who has crossed John Phillips has learned: Phillips–a man who has run for Congress, published an autobiography, been cast in a movie about his own life, and designed an atomic bomb–knows how to play hardball.
The Aristotle-Metromail suit slogged on until 1994, when John Phillips and Aristotle lawyer Blair Richardson hit pay dirt. They found evidence, they believed, that Metromail had used restricted voter-registration data (obtained from the AFL-CIO and others) for commercial purposes, possibly in violation of state laws. Most states prohibit voter data from being used for nonpolitical purposes. “[Metromail is] an outstanding example of how you do not handle personal information in the 1990s,” says Phillips.
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By that time a besieged Metromail had agreed to settle Aristotle’s lawsuit for $2.7 million. (Phillips earlier rejected a $4 million settlement that, among other differences, would have prohibited him from telling government authorities about possible Metromail violations of voter data laws. While lawyer Richardson characterized the clause as a “bribe for silence,” Metromail spokeswoman Julie Springer says the provision was a “standard confidentiality clause . . . patterned after a protective order that was already entered in this case” by the court.) Even after the settlement, Phillips didn’t loosen his hold on the rival firm. “There are legal and ethical issues here about which I care a great deal,” he explains.
What Phillips doesn’t say that seems obvious even to the casual observer is that he is having a wickedly good time. Business is part sport, and if Phillips is Dennis Rodman, R.R. Donnelley is Frank Brickowski.
Lack of evidence didn’t stop Phillips from capitalizing on Metromail’s poor judgment. He, Blair Richardson, and Marc Klaas wrote letters and contacted the media with news that a Metromail 900 number–synonymous in many minds with sleazy phone sex lines–had been offering children’s data to callers. “I have an immediate concern as any parent would,” Phillips told the Associated Press last December, “about the potential for pedophiles or violent felons . . . to locate their victims through this type of service.” Letters written by Marc Rotenberg to the Federal Trade Commission and by Phillips to Donnelley board members also made their way into the hands of the press.
In fact, documents Donnelley filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 7 clearly show that the company’s wariness of John Phillips persists. “No assurance can be given,” Donnelley wrote to potential investors, “that Mr. Phillips will cease these efforts, or that governmental investigations or regulation or adverse publicity that adversely affect the Company’s business will not result from his efforts.”
