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You are hereDoes new Government cookie policy favor publicacy over privacy? Part XIII -- Privacy-Publicacy Series
Submitted by Scott Cleland on Tue, 2009-08-11 14:14
The U.S. Government is relatively quietly proposing a major change in its online privacy policy from a Government ban on Government using "cookies" to track citizens' use of U.S. Government websites to allowing the Government to track some citizen online behavior with some restrictions.
This policy shift is a quintessential example of the shift away from a default expectation of online privacy, to the default "publicacy" approach increasingly taken by many web 2.0 entities.
I have written about the growing tension between privacy and publicacy thirteen times this year, because I believe it is one of the biggest changes that is occurring online that average users are not aware of, but should be.
While I am no means anti-cookie or anti-ecommerce/e-advertising, and while I believe users have a personal responsibility to try and protect their privacy online, I also believe the core problem with privacy online is that there is woefully little fair representation going on by the entities that are collecting private information on users.
When I testified for the second time on Internet privacy this June before the House Internet Subcommittee, I emphasized the troubling and growing disconnect between online privacy users' perception that they enjoyed substantial privacy online and how little privacy they enjoy in reality. Consumer Reports had a great survey last September that proves this troubling disconnect between online privacy perception and reality.
My beef with the publicacy/Web 2.0 crowd is that consumers have not been meaningfully asked for their consent to use their private information. It has been very conveniently assumed.
My concern with the proposed change in the U.S. Government's online cookie policy is that the Government may be aligning more with the publicacy agenda of selected third parties than the privacy interests of most U.S. citizens and taxpayers.
In closing, as I recommended in my House Internet privacy testimony in June, the superior approach to privacy policy is for it to be a consumer-driven, technology/competition neutral privacy policy, not the current default "finders keepers, losers weepers" publicacy approach of many leading online entities.
Privacy-Publicacy Faultline Series here:
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