Senators Kerry and McCain attempt privacy quarterback sneak

Originally published on 04/14/2011 at lubbockonline.com

Declan Mcullagh of the Privacy Inc blog at CNET acquired the text of Senators Kerry and McCains proprosed privacy bill. The good news is it is a step in the right direction. The bad news is it has a glaring hole in it's protection. Lord Humongous was right in yesterdays comment when he expressed distrust in the two senators.

The ‘‘Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011’’ is supposed to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. But Declan says it has a glaring hole:

But the measure applies only to companies and some nonprofit groups, not to the federal, state, and local police agencies that have adopted high-tech surveillance technologies including cell phone tracking, GPS bugs, and requests to Internet companies for users' personal information--in many cases without obtaining a search warrant from a judge.

While disappointing, this isn't really surprising. It's right in line with recent attempts by the FBI and Justice Department to increase their ability to spy on citizens without need for warrants or oversight.

There is a constant struggle for control of information between citizens and governments. The more control over citizens information government has the more control it can have over them. For the first time in history it is trivial for the government to know more about citizens than they know about themselves. It is the nature of government that it will use that ability unless we insist controls and protections be put in place. And we will have to insist. Our representatives may start out working for us, but after a time in Washington (or Austin) they become, by definition, part of the government. Working in our interest becomes a conflict of interest for them, although they don't see it that way.

Kerry and McCain introduce privacy bill

Originally published on 04/13/2011 at lubbockonline.com

Juliann Francis of Bloomberg reports that Senators John Kerry and John McCain have introduced a privacy bill in the Senate called the "2011 Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act." The bill will require companies to limit online data collection. Somewhat.

The bill makes use of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorney generals to make sure companies comply. It doesn't have a "do not track" component and has provisions for companies to get exemptions from portions of the bill by designing privacy policies to be approved by 3rd parties vetted by the FTC.

I haven't seen the actual bill yet, but it's a safe bet it doesn't go far enough. It's also a safe bet that it goes as far as it can at this point. A lot of companies count on the income they make gathering and selling consumer information. The privacy situation shouldn't have been allowed to get to this point, but to suddenly cut off that revenue completely could be devastating to the online economy, and maybe to the offline, too. So we must make use of the slippery slope political groups scream about, getting what we can now and pushing for more once everyone is used to the level we've just set.