Making personal data personal
‘IN the United States, federal legislation on online privacy has languished, as lawmakers weigh the interests of consumers and companies in the battle for personal information.
Part of the difficulty in regulating online privacy is the speed of technological innovation. Just as it becomes remarkably easy for us to share our information with others, it also becomes cheaper and easier to crunch and analyze that information — and store it forever, if necessary.
Stewart A. Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, is among those who see enormous benefits for private companies and government agencies alike. To fight it on privacy grounds, he argued, would be largely futile. “You can’t really have a property interest in data,” he argued. “It’s going to get cheaper to reproduce it. It’s going to get reproduced and stored. It’s going to get copied.”
Privacy advocates worry about the consequences. Most people may not have much to hide. For a few, not sharing personal information may be vital. They’re the ones who need the protection of the law, argued Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at the New America Foundation and author of “Consent of the Networked,” a book about digital freedom.
“It may be victims of domestic abuse who don’t want to be stalked or tracked, or it could be dissidents in Syria, or someone who has weird opinions and could mistakenly end up on a watch list when they don’t deserve it,” said Ms. MacKinnon. “If you have a democratic society, the point is not to say whatever is good for the majority is all we need.”’
I think there needs to be a central privacy complaint process where anyone who feels their privacy has been violated can come and get justice. I think Truste would be the perfect place to host it.