The author aids and abets (minimally, true, but still) the very things he decries. How? Check this statement:
"On my ZDNet Project Failures blog, I discuss surprising, and sometimes shocking, activities in the world of enterprise software. The Facebook accusations (whether true or not), coupled with OnStar???s policies, demonstrate that privacy lapses are a deeply important form of technology-related failure."
The key word here is "failure". By referring to these activities as "failures" he imparts to them a certain defensibility as being "accidental" or "unexpected" hence providing a bit of white-wash for what are actually completely intentional activities.
These things he describes in this column are not failures. They are systems that are working exactly as designed, exactly as intended. They are actually successes, not failures. They are successful implementations of activities and policies that are harmful to consumers in general while creating benefit for the implementing business. The benefit for the implementers of course was intended to be primarily secret or at least out of sight of the people who were being taken advantage of, but data gathering is well known throughout modern businesses as a way to make money. These mechanisms are designed to gather saleable data about consumers, hence were implemented with full knowledge and approval of the businesses and their leaders. Nobody creates an "accidental" data gathering function and then "accidentally" makes money selling that data.
These things are immoral, they are unethical, they may be illegal to some degree, but they are not "failures".
Mr. Krigsman, don't be so coy ... the systems described in this column were put in place on purpose, and the people putting those systems in place knew exactly what they were doing. The simple truth is that they don't care about consumer rights, or abstract concepts such as personal privacy as it applies to the sheep they are attempting to shear. Please leave out the "whitewashing" language in future columns.
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