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Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
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| Privacy? Har, har, har… |
An internet privacy law is coming, Congressman Rick Boucher promised, as he steered his committee into the marshes of online behavioral advertising, deep packet inspection and location-tracking services.
Boucher, a Virginia Democrat and longtime ally of digital rights groups, now heads the House subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. He said [he] wants the committee to write a broad online privacy law this year…
But the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Leslie Harris warned the committee not to get too wrapped up with any particular technology, since the privacy threats change quickly — pointing out that current privacy laws are good in some areas — video rental records, for one — and non-existent in others…
It’s not clear how broad a law Boucher has in mind, though it’s likely to be some codification of generally accepted data-privacy practices. Those include telling people when you collect data and why, letting them choose to join in or not, using the data only for the reason you collected it, letting people see and correct the information and destroying it when its not longer needed…
The Free Press’s Ben Scott summed up what he and many consumer advocates would like to see in an overarching privacy bill.
“It needs to cover intentionality, behavior, and outcome,” Scott said. “Why do you want my information? What are you going to do with it? And what does that mean for me?”
I’ll second that.
Online privacy is a pipe dream, no matter what the law, no matter what the security, someone will get their hand on it. The only privacy is just don’t put it online.
Until they outlaw ISP’s use of deep packet inspection technology for service management nothing is safe/secure/private. Your SSL session with your bank included. I’ve seen this evilest of technologies in action. Google “man in the middle attack” for the basics of how it’s done.
DPI is the single largest threat to the privacy of every single internet user on the planet yet, it still hasn’t been outlawed.
Tel/Cable companies far prefer DPI to manage internet services than to invest in plant & infrastructure.
They’ll call it “network management”. It ain’t. It’s service management. Big difference !!
Privacy laws need to beefed up and modernized generally.
But, thanks to the “no government is the best government” Republicans, identity thieves have been taking us to the laundry.