Slashdot Mirror
Senate Scrutinizes Privacy Issues of ISP User Tracking
Hugh Pickens writes "As companies collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users, there is concern that tracking individuals' Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to look at the policy issues, and the hottest topic will be proposed systems by which ISPs can watch users and sell information about their surfing habits to advertising companies. The Center for Democracy and Technology has issued a report suggesting that these systems may violate federal law (PDF). 'Advertising per se is not the evil here,' says Leslie Harris from CDT. 'It's the collection of individuals' information, usually without their knowledge, always without their consent, creation of profiles and the complete inability of people to make choices about that.' On the other side NebuAd, the most active ad-targeting company, says its profiles are interest-based, and not personally identifiable. 'We have designed our entire company to make sure that we stay on the opt-out side of those laws and policies,' says NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes. Charter Communications announced last month that it would suspend a trial of NebuAd due to customer concerns about privacy."
How ironic that Congress is, in all likelihood, about to pass a telecoms immunity bill which allows them to spy on us... but are giving lip service to the issue of telecoms spying on us.
CongressCritters and Snoozators will soon be making a lot of noise about how they are protecting the public from being spied upon, while at the same time making it legal for us to be spied on.
Nothings changed, just another election year.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Have you ever counted or even looked at the 1 pixel images embedded into web sites?
I encountered a recent ridiculous one from a Yahoo access - something like that:
us.bc.yahoo.com/b?P=FjLh6UWTUG8MnHdaSGkxXR + over 1000 characters more
To load 1 PIXEL!!!!!
There is tons of that stuff embedded in web sites. And that's got nothing to do with 2-way communication whatsoever.
Wo tracks it, who controls it, who sells and buys it?
Are the neurons in Sentat's heads interlinked enough to grok this?
Highly doubtful - and they (the trackers) will fight tooth and nail about it to keep it that way.
We all are paying for the free ride to information with our privacy.
1970s: Don't steal. The government hates competition.
2010s: Don't spy on your users. The government still hates competition.
Yet, NebuAd says the data they collect is not "personally" identifiable. I'll bet a six-pack that the data is damn-sure "individually" identifiable by cookies, etc.
"Personally" just means they're not selling my name along with my surfing habits. But they are very much tracking my individual habits/interest and selling that; user by individual user. I say send them back to tele-marketing, the scum-bags.
Ibid.
Hey, guess what... if a partner in a two-way correspondence chooses to share details of that correspondence, that's their choice (i.e., don't give private info to someone you don't trust).
Your ISP is a carrier of information, not a partner in a two-way correspondence, they are a third party who facilitates your communication. Like the postal service in a snailmail correspondence. In the contexts of internet access they are proposing to eavesdrop on private communication for profit. I doubt you would be happy if the postal service routinely read your mail, then slotted in 'targeted' adverts, before re-sealing and delivering to your home but promising to forget what they had read.
Hence anonymization and encryption. Did you even read my post? Or did you rush to respond to the first line you read to which you could raise an objection?
If all your traffic is encrypted, and goes to an anonymization server, how exactly is the ISP supposed to sniff the traffic? Seriously.
The two-way correspondence refers to the end recipient of your packets, not to the ISP.
I did indeed read your post, all the way through, the point you made related to someone party to the correspondence revealing information, not the carrier (postal, phone or internet). Your ISP is a third party to your internet browsing, you pay them to carry your traffic, not to parse then serve 'targeted' adverts for profit, which is the subject of the article.
Google and ISP profiling are not comparable, I don't pay Google for a service and can opt out of their profiling. As I said, I pay my ISP for access to the internet, their profiling gives no added value and will reduce my security.
As to encryption, it's a sad day when you cannot trust your service provider to provide a service, without eavesdropping for profit. What next, encryption for snailmail? We could always use invisible ink, but that might prove difficult for the mail service to deliver.
Not so. After tomorrow, for example, Americans will no longer be able to sue AT&T for violating the law by letting the Bush Administration tap their phones without any judicial oversight.
The current president has taken the 60-year old notion of "state secrets" to an extent that absolutely shreds the Bill of Rights, but there was always the possibility that the truth would come out and the lawbreakers would have to pay. After tomorrow, not any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Doesn't "state secrets" as currently used in court violate the first amendment?
Not the speech part, the ... to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. part.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
You're transmitting postcards, not sealed envelopes... assuming that by "it" you are referring to privacy, what makes you think that you have any expectation of privacy...
To complete your analogy, I guess it would be okay for the US government to read all postcards sent via the US mail, log the data, and use it for whatever purpose they want? After all, not sending it in a triple-sealed container means that we clearly wanted this information gathered and used. UPS can open and examine packages sent in paper envelopes or cardboard boxes, since if we cared about privacy we would have used a welded box.
You're confusing what could happen with what should happen. Just because someone can read your postcard doesn't mean we should be okay with the USPS doing so as policy. Just because UPS could open packages and reseal them, we shouldn't be okay with them modeling my underwear before they arrive.