I’ve been feeling quite private lately. And in true 21st century fashion, I am celebrating that by posting my private thoughts to a public blog – though given the number of readers I seem to have, that is akin to mumbling them quietly to myself, so the irony is a bit lost.
And in truth, the discussion about private discussion is becoming more public every day. With Facebook, in settling a federal case, admitting that they had not taken their users’ privacy seriously when they willy nilly changed privacy policies, releasing all manner of users’ information to the cyberworld without making much effort to ask permission or even explain that it was happening – and with Google pulling a Big-Brother-we are-amassing-a-huge-online-dossier-on-you-for-your-own-good move recently (and then telling those who balked, “fine, go ahead and use some OTHER search engine to “google”) – people are starting to wake up to the fact that to get a ticket on a plane bound for cyberspace, you have to hand over control of information about everything you do, see, buy, and say once you arrive. And you though TSA strip searches were outrageous.Our friends and clients at the Federal Trade Commission have been worrying about this for a long time. In a report in late 2010, they proposed a Do Not track mechanism that would let Internet users make choices about who can collect data about us as we travel the Web. Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently went to the White House to talk about private industry’s response to Do Not Track. You can see his remarks, on which we helped, here:
And at the end of last year, we worked with Commissioner Julie Brill to elaborate on some of these subjects at International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Practical Privacy Series. Her remarks are here:
Kate
