Does new Government cookie policy favor publicacy over privacy? Part XIII -- Privacy-Publicacy Series
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.
- A Washington Post article highlighted privacy groups concerns about the policy shift. Also see comments by EPIC, CDT/EFF, and ACLU.
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.
- ("Publicacy" is the opposite of privacy. "Publicacy" also describes the Web 2.0 movement that seeks to have transparency largely supplant privacy online.)
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.