Former DoubleClick Exec Named Privacy Czar

tsu doh nimh writes "A former executive for banner ad giant DoubleClick has been selected to be the first ever privacy czar for the Department of Homeland Security, says this Washingtonpost.com story." Just leaves you speechless ....

Comments

Puh-lease

[ChaoticChaos]

Will we start getting Homeland Security updates through banner ads? Will popup banner ads now be government endorsed? ;-)

Surely they could find someone with a better resume than that? Surely?

Bizzaro world.

[scrotch]

This whole presidency is like opposite day.

No, she sounds like a great choice.

[Welsh Dragon]

O'Connor Kelly sounds like a good choice for this position. DoubleClick was one of the most grevious privacy offenders on the internet, probably the absolute worst. They were so bad that even the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) got into the act. They're banner ads would abuse bugs in browsers to set cookies that would be able to track you from everywhere by using subdomains of base domains such as .co.uk (most browsers assumed you could set a parent if it was a high level domain like example.com or example.net just by counting the number of dots, but you can't register example.uk, only example.co.uk, so you could effectively set cookies for every purchasable domain) and other nasty tricks. They claimed that they didn't store personal data, but it was obvious that they were monitoring and corrolating everything they could, and the wide number of websites that used doubleclick meant they had a huge repository of data to mine.

O'Connor Kelly came in after DoubleClick was shown to be, well, evil when it came to privacy, to clean things up. Many changes have occured at DoubleClick to fix some of the problems. Given the amount of data DoubleClick had and what they did with it, O'Connor Kelly should have an excellent idea of what abuses you can do when you have that sort of information.

Hopefully she can step in and help prevent that sort of thing from happening at this level too.

Re:No, she sounds like a great choice.

[sdavid]

Your point is well taken, and she may well have been effective at improving Doubleclick's behaviour. However that doesn't change the fact that she comes from an industry that uses private information for their own profit. No matter how personally beyond reproach she may be, she's still a wolf amoung sheep.

Re:No, she sounds like a great choice.

[anthony_dipierro]

All industries use private information for their own profit. Who would you suggest they use?

Someone anti-industry, like Ralph Nader

Kevin Mitnick

[hey]

... or like hiring Kevin Mitnick as a security
consultant - ha ha. Oh wait that's not a joke.

Is this really that ludicrous?

[Snowspinner]

Before the huge storm of criticism starts, let's ask ourselves:

How would this be different from hiring Kevin Mitnick to handle security issues?

The we like Kevin Mitnick more than we like ad agencies is not sufficient grounds for an objection. What I want to know is, why shouldn't we hire knowledgable people away from doing what we don't want, and into doing what we do want?

Re:Is this really that ludicrous?

[Xerithane]

This DoubleClick exec doesn't think the things his company did were wrong. That's the difference.

Hi everybody, it's time to play, spot the idiot. The idiot has several characteristics, the most notable one is the inability to form a sentence without being absolutely wrong. For example, "...the things his company did..." is exceptionally wrong, because this DoubleClick exec happens to be a woman.

Proof that they don't know what they are talking about, nor that they know who this person is.

The second sign of an idiot is the ability to peer inside of others heads and illustrate what it is that they are thinking. For example, "This DoubleClick exec doesn't think ..." Aside from their actual lack of ability in doing such things, this is nothing of the case. As she was brought in to clean up DoubleClicks act after the FTC started coming down. After she came on board, DoubleClick cleaned up their privacy violations. This would illustrate that DoubleClick does care about privacy, after enforced to do so, and this executive happens to care very much about it, as it is her career.

There are many other signs to point to an idiot, these are just the most prominent. Stay tuned for next weeks, "When Idiots Post"

Why's this bad?

[MojoMonkey]

From the article:

"She joined DoubleClick in February 2000 after the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into complaints that the company was improperly storing and sharing private user data. DoubleClick also was embroiled in similar investigations by 12 state attorneys general and several class-action lawsuits.

DoubleClick settled most of those lawsuits, and created a division specializing in privacy compliance, which O'Connor Kelly ran. "

Sounds to me like some changes were make by O'Connor Kelly and privacy was improved. I'd say it takes a pretty strong person to go into a company as deep in it as Double Click and improve it.

Come on now people.

[Geekenstein]

Once again, we have another /. double standard. How many times have I watched people here applaud when a former cracker gets appointed to a top position in security?

But God Forbid someone who knows the ins and outs of privacy abuses, a person who would know BEST how to protect against them, gets the chance to do so. They're evil and will always be evil!

Re:Asking the burglar to guard the house

[Amiga Trombone]

Rather than appointing someone who worked for a company notorious for trampling people's privacy rights, IMO they should have appointed someone who has a record of protecting an upholding our right to privacy.

That's a little harsh. After all, DoubleClick hired her to address the complaints that were coming from users. Her job was to help DoubleClick clean up their act. She isn't the worst possible choice.

Playing devil's advocate...

[geekwench]

Having read the article, I can't find anything that leads me to believe that Ms. O'Connor Kelly is guilty of anything othere than being employed by a company that was guilty of privacy abuses. It was stated, in fact, that she came on-board with DoubleClick after the investigation, and was responsible for cleaning up the company's act. How utterly reprehensible! :)
My actual worry is that this will be nothing more than an "honorary" posting; something that Ashcroft can point to and say "See? We've got someone working on privacy issues," while carefully not pointing out that she's not allowed to actually do anything about privacy protection. Although, the mention that the "Total Information Awareness" program has been - at least temporarily - derailed has me breathing a little easier.

Of course, if it does come down to a worse-case scenario, I'm going to have to unblock DoubleClick's cookies, or I'll be in big trouble!

RTFA

[phyxeld]

As bad as slashdot has made it sound, after reading the article I think this is actually a good thing. From the text:

O'Connor Kelly is well acquainted with the often bitter debate over balancing privacy rights with other interests. She joined DoubleClick in February 2000 after the Federal Trade Commission launched an investigation into complaints that the company was improperly storing and sharing private user data. DoubleClick also was embroiled in similar investigations by 12 state attorneys general and several class-action lawsuits.

DoubleClick settled most of those lawsuits, and created a division specializing in privacy compliance, which O'Connor Kelly ran.

chrisd is either intentionally trying to stir shit up with sensational misrepresentation of facts, or he just skimmed the article before posting it and didn't bother to get the whole story. In either case, I think this is definitely worthy of an Update: on the front page, noting that the individual in question was responsible for cleaning up DoubleClick's privacy catastrophies, rather than causing them.

I'm really glad I read the article on this post, because after only reading the slashdot version I had a very different opinion on the matter than I do now!

Re:RTFA

[feed_me_cereal]

I just finished reading the article, and I had simmilar feelings, but perhaps not to the extent of yours. The article doesn't say she neccesarily "cleaned up" DoubleClick, or that she was hired by DoubleClick to do anything other than whitewash the company in the face of federal scrutiny. Perhaps she has been chosen to do the same for the government now? I don't really know one way or the other, all I have to rely on right now is the history of both DoubleClick and the Bush administration, neither of which are remotely good in the face of privacy. REMOTELY. All I know is, if the Bush administration is looking for a privacy advocate, there's plenty of places they can go other than DoubleClick that would make MUCH MUCH more sense. Like, say, the people who raised the suit against DoubleClick in the first place.

Re:RTFA

[platypus]

Yeah, and the exec from microsoft who cleaned up microsofts anti trust catastrophes should lead the departement of justice.

Please, the more data a company like doubleclick is can grab from/about people (legally), the more profitable they are. Do you really think the most important criterium she had to meet was being a privacy evangelist???
She just had to play one on TV.
OTOH, that probably make her a perfect fit for her new job.

this is no weirder than the fact that....

[wuchang]

the best rapper is white
the best golfer is black
the tallest NBA player is chinese
the swiss hold the america's cup
france is accusing the u.s. of arrogance
germany doesn't want to go to war
and the three most powerful men in america are named "bush", "dick", and "colon".

Re:Asking the burglar to guard the house

[anthony_dipierro]

Her job was to help DoubleClick clean up their act.

No, her job was to help DoubleClick look like they were cleaning up their act.

In other words, she's the perfect choice for an administration that wants to look like they're respecting people's privacy.

You're missing a *very* important point

[jtheory]

I read the exact same paragraph and it *confirmed* my concerns.

Look at this in perspective: DoubleClick is a huge organization that is having serious problems with lawsuits because it's trampling all over people's privacy. They bring in O'Connor Kelly, who does a good job settling *most* of the lawsuits (note: settling != defeating) and starts a new division to help keep DoubleClick safe from future lawsuits. DoubleClick continues to do as much data-mining and collection as it possibly can (because that's STILL the core of its business) but now it avoids most of the unpleasant and costly public lawsuits.

Now substitute "the US Govt" for "DoubleClick". Fits pretty well, doesn't it? It doesn't sound *too* bad... until you consider that they're still planning on doing as much privacy invasion as they can possibly get away with... she'll just help them walk that wavy line.

Think about the difference if the new privacy advisor were, say, one of the "12 state attorneys general" who were prosecuting DoubleClick, or someone involved in the "several class-action lawsuits" from the other side. Or ANYONE who had privacy advocacy experience from the victims' side.

Re:Depends on the point of view...

[zaphod123]

In case you missed your history classes, the US "Founding Fathers" didn't trust government. In fact, they felt that government was not trustworthy.
That is why there was the attempt to put all the checks and balances in place.

Almost as bad as...

[NecrosisLabs]

..naming James Watt as secretary of the interior. Oh wait, that's been done. how about...
..having Kissinger head a probe about Intelligence failures. Oh yeah. Ok, let's try
..having John Ashcroft head the Deparment of Justice.

Ok, that's it. I give up.