Microsoft Calls for National Privacy Law

tabdelgawad writes "Brian Krebs, who writes the Washington Post's Security Fix Blog notes that Microsoft has just asked Congress to enact a new federal privacy law to preempt the growing hodge-podge of state laws that regulate how companies can use personal information. Go Microsoft!?"

Comments

Not necessarily good

[tuxlove]

Don't assume Microsoft is trying to enact a law that *protects* your privacy. Perhaps they just want privacy laws to be predictable w/o too much concern for whether they actually protect or not.

Re:Not necessarily good

[InvalidError]

I'm fine with companies tracking my personal info if UK-style laws are adopted. IIRC, some of the more interesting clauses went something like this:
1) companies shall not use nor retain information whose origins is not documented
2) companies must make all the info they have on an individual including sources at the individual's request
3) individuals may have companies delete records unless the company can justify keeping the records of terminated accounts

This way, companies would at least have to think at least twice before collecting, using and distributing data.

Re:Don't let your head explode

[NaruVonWilkins]

I think that the same can be said for many, possibly a majority, of people - at least in the US. Sure, sometimes we do things for charity, sometimes we do things because we feel they're right, but there are so many things we do simply because they're cheaper. We don't know, say, what the conditions are in the factories where our clothes are made, but we buy them anyway.

Companies are a more distilled form of this. There are, of course, exceptions - more people than corporations, certainly - but I think the concept holds.

Of course they want a national privacy law

[Scareduck]

That law will read something as follows:

1. Individuals have no rights to privacy.
2. Corporations can do what they want with any data.

That is, they want enshrined in national law the most pernicious possible data standards. The fact that this is going down during the Bush administration may or may not play a part, but certainly, the idea that bad laws can be purchased isn't helping assuage any fears I have that such legislation is hopelessly one-sided.

MS vs. Google

[Zebra_X]

This is a preemptive strike against Google.

MS isn't in the business of knowing who you are or what you do. They want you to buy their software, not collect your personal data. It shows in their software. Activation is completely anonymous as is error reporting and authenticity checks. This is not true however, for Google.

They want to know who you are, what you do, what you click, buy, read and where you want to go. It's not going to stop there. Google wants information about every corner of the world. Thanks to a digital age, it is possible to gleen this information from our on-line habits.

MS is making a strike at google's efforts by putting tighter restrictions on how they can use, and possibly distribute your information in the future.

Anyone else see this as an attempt to kill Google?

[handmedowns]

I mean, after all.. what does google do? Index information. Revenue is based off how they use that information, personal and public. Will this law(s) convienently be aimed towards creating requirements on how to protect such information that it will make it costly ($$ and time) enough to hurt google's business?

Sounds like the HIPPA expanded.

Privacy of Third Parties

[RoadDogTy]

Microsoft is an industry leader in terms of user privacy, internally every employee (for whom it is relevant) must undergo security/privacy training and sign statements about compliance with privacy standards (particularly in terms of how the company deals with PII, Personally Identifiable Information). Saying that the company wants a single privacy standard solely for the purpose of making money may be true in a few corner cases, but in general its not true because Microsoft already has to comply with international standards which (particularly in the EU) are much stricter than the standards of any US State. I think the biggest reason Microsoft would support standard privacy laws is because it would be easier for the company to make guarantees about third party partners (particularly those that use Passport) and make some baseline claims about the level of privacy partners must support.