Wrangling Over Proposed Privacy Laws Continues

zurab writes "USA Today reports several U.S. lawmakers introduced a long-awaited privacy bill Wednesday that would allow U.S. businesses to share information about customers who have not explicitly forbidden them to do so. And one of the supporters of this bill - the beloved Mr. Boucher."

Comments

The Joy of Opt-out...

[Nogami_Saeko]

Because they know NOBODY in their right mind would EVER opt-in to something like this, so they have to open the door to big business somehow.

I mean, otherwise the aforementioned big business would stop paying them campaign contributions and such...

Privacy and personal information...

[crc32]

should be property rights held by individuals. This allows a more perfect market, because the information would be more closely protected than this bill provides. As Larry Lessig explains in his book Code, Privacy as a property right allows those who don't care about privacy to get what they want, while those who have considerable concerns to seriously protect themselves. Any other scheme will deny the fact that privacy concerns differ between different segments of society.

Wrong Name

[dreamchaser]

Shouldn't it be the 'Lack of Privacy Bill' rather than 'Privacy Bill'?

reaction?

[tps12]

My first impression to this is disbelief: citizens have repeatedly sent Congress a strong message of concern over privacy, especially on the Information Superhighway. Businesses have, mostly, elected to create their own privacy policies in the absence of legislation. Everyone supports privacy.

Or do they?

Look at your average computer user. He (or she) doesn't use PGP, has insecure passwords, will gladly install spyware in exchange for a P2P client, and is all too willing to help email worms propogate. Now, don't try to tell me that this hypothetical (but all too real) user wouldn't give up his entire purchasing habits to save himself 7 clicks a month on AOL.

He would be delighted if he could be greeted with "I bet you want the new WWF video: click here to order" when he logged in. That's what this information sharing does. And the public is going to eat it up.

Meanwhile, the fraction of us who actually care about this kind of thing pay the price. The only sensible thing to do? Become what we hate the most. Format /dev/hd* and install Windows and AOL. Your browser votes don't count unless your user agent says MSIE, and your purchases don't count unless they're through AOL or MSN. We have to make a choice between Free Software and privacy. Once we've saved privacy, then maybe Linux will come back...who knows? But for now, we need to put Linux aside as we prepare for the real battle.

This will affect net usage?

[jsmyth]

"I'll predict a much greater level of Internet usage with these privacy policies in place," Boucher said.

I fail to see how this will work at statistical levels - it might encourage some people who have abstained to return to the 'net, but the vast majority, those simple casual users? The use of the word much is inappropriate here.

Put it this way: if you were to hold a random sampling of U.S. citizens on internet privacy, you would likely get a lot of semi- or un-informed views on it. The reason is simple: it's not considered important enough by society at large. If/when privacy becomes a big thing in the media and in government, only then will the population at large (who are being spoonfed by popular media, remember) feel that it is important enough to become an issue.

Until then, it remains an issue for the interested parties and the various lobby groups. The average internet user doesn't care, so there will be no upswing, no "much greater level", nice as it would be to believe that Mr. Average Midwestern Suburbian spends as much time as we do reading up on issues such as this.

Opt out policy

[ivrcti]

Sure, our customers can opt out. It's right there on our web site. Just click on the little tiny smiley face in the bottom left corner, then follow the 4 subsequent links to the opt out policy page. Be sure to find the little "I refuse this offer" check box, then hit submit. "Oh" the submit button is broke?? Now how did that happen? We'll have our help desk take a look at it. (The web site will be down for a few days while they reboot the system.)

Re:Opt out policy

[jsmyth]

You might think this is funny, but the doubleclick opt-out was exactly this. You had to click through several layers, including one page which solely consisted of a rant on how it is actually in your benefit to allow them to track your usage, and then you have to confusingly click to disagree with their policy, get to the last page, which made a tiny little change to a cookie. Would've been much quicker to print the instruction: Change the number in our cookie to OPT-OUT and it'll be fine.

Look what happened to doubleclick...

Boucher has it right

[SplendidIsolatn]

If you have Store A and Store B, both selling the same product, both selling for the same price, both with equally great customer service, but Store A promises never to disclose your information under any circumstances and Store B doesn't have such a policy...where will you shop? Eventually, a lot of other people will shop at Store A, and when they do shop there, it'll be because of guaranteed privacy, thus making it a selling point.

This might work out for the best--getting Joe Public caring about privacy issues, even if it is a small start. I can just see the news story now:

Reporter: Mister Manager of Wal-Mart, how do you explain losing some of your business to Target?
Mister Wal-Mart: Well, they don't offer our customers the opportunity to receive special offers from our sister stores.
Reporter: So you're losing sales because you sell information about your customers?
Mister Wal-Mart: Uhhhhhh

Real Privacy Legislation

[MartinB]

Compare and contrast that travesty with UK Data Protection Act 1998. To summarise

Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice. They say that data must be:

• fairly and lawfully processed;
• processed for limited purposes;
• adequate, relevant and not excessive;
• accurate;
• not kept longer than necessary;
• processed in accordance with the data subject's rights;
• secure;
• not transferred to countries without adequate protection.

Personal data covers both facts and opinions about the individual. It also includes information regarding the intentions of the data controller towards the individual, although in some limited circumstances exemptions will apply. With processing, the definition is far wider than before. For example, it incorporates the concepts of 'obtaining', holding' and 'disclosing'.

The Full explanation of the principles can be found here

(source: http://www.dataprotection.gov.uk/principl.htm)

Note that last point - the US at present does not have 'adequate protection' (ie protection to an equivalent level). This proposed bill takes it further away.

Something else to note - the enforcement of this will only get stricter when the new Data Protection Commissioner takes office.

No right to sue

[EReidJ]

Consumers would have no right to sue if their privacy was violated. Enforcement would be left in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission, which usually does not impose fines on a first offense.

This is the part of the bill that I find particularly noxious and annoying. I can (with regret) swallow the rest of the bill, as long as the company gives me the explicit choice, whenever they collect the information, about whether I want to prevent them from selling the information to other people.

But this... When a company breaks the law, and they violate my privacy, I have a right to sue their asses off! I have a right (a moral right, not a legal one, IANAL) to publicly punish them and make damn sure they never do this again and get appropriate compensation for violating my privacy. This bill specifically would take away this right from me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't realize we were violating your privacy! All those magazine companies now know your income level? Whoops, our bad! But we're just going to do it again, because we have no incentive to obey the law!"

Laws don't mean anything without teeth. Remove the teeth, might as well not even have the law.