Coop's Corner: Who'll guard Net guardians?
You can't trust the government to protect your Internet privacy. And it makes little difference whether Al G. or Dubya winds up in the Oval Office; they're equally feckless. In a crunch, count on the government's law enforcement bureaucracies to do what's most expedient, not necessarily what's most right.
Then again, you can't trust the likes of DoubleClick, or any of the other fast-talking Internet outfits, to look out for you either. Fact is, when it comes to protecting privacy, the Internet industry has proven singularly unable or unwilling to do the right thing. Try as they might, these avatars of the New Economy have earned a reputation for being unable to resist the temptation to turn a fast buck at your expense.
After returning from Internet conferences in Washington and New York this month, I can't say we're any closer to getting this mess resolved than we were six months ago.
The number of sites requiring registration increases all the time. Who knows what happens to that information once it's put into the system? Yet as Web surfers are being asked to give up more of their privacy, they know less and less about the information companies compile about them.
This is no longer simply a hot topic confined to the digerati. Before the commencement of the fall congressional session, Rep. Asa Hutchinson returned home and conducted 16 town meetings in his district. When he compiled a ranking of the issues nearest and dearest to his constituents, Internet privacy wound up near the top of the list.
Perhaps that's a harbinger of good news. Hard to say because the law has failed to keep up with the advance of technology that encroaches upon Internet privacy.
That gap between the sophistication of technological surveillance and safeguards to protect against abuse is only widening.
Congress is considering a solution based on "notice and choice." In my book, that's a half measure, since a published warning does absolutely nothing to further privacy protection.
My fear is that things are going to need to become a lot worse before they get a lot better.
Stephen Colgate, an assistant attorney general, dismisses fears that the government might one day abuse its vast power to rip away an individual's privacy on the Internet. "We seek this information ... pursuant to a court order."
"I think the principles are different from what we've been living with every day," says Rochelle Lazarus, a veteran advertising executive with Ogilvey and Mather. "The potential of the Internet makes it very different." That's a mouthful. Lazarus and her advertising colleagues know only too well there are munchkins out there who would readily give up their DNA for a crack at a free Big Mac. What can I say but bribes work.
Asa Hutchinson on federal action: "I think there will be privacy legislation. ... I hope it will not be something that we need to correct later." Hutchinson also says Congress might tack on an addition to the current bankruptcy law to cover companies that attempt to sell customer lists.
Tom Davis, who sits on the government management information technology subcommittee in the House of Representatives, says each party remains caught in its old political alignment, ignoring the changes being forced by technology and the Internet. "Both parties are trying to de-accentuate the technology revolution, and they've not yet stepped up to the plate and addressed the new fault lines." A Republican, Davis says he's at a loss why anybody from Microsoft would contribute to the Gore campaign. "That's like a chicken giving to Colonel Sanders."
FTC Chairman Robert Pitofsky says he believes privacy concerns continue to shackle the growth of e-commerce. "I think there are lots of people who do not engage in electronic commerce because of concerns about privacy," he says, adding that legislation is a virtual certainty.
Maybe I should be less of a gloomy Gus and consider the analogy offered by Zero Knowledge President Austin Hill. He notes how the environmental consciousness of factory owners has evolved in the past hundred years. In the 1890s, he says, ecology didn't rate as a concern when a new site was chosen for development. By the 1950s, environmental issues may have climbed a few pegs in the priority list, but they still remained secondary considerations. Yet these days, Hill notes, environmental impact studies have become part of the natural process in evaluating the selection of a construction site.