CNet‘s Declan McCullagh has a great piece about the politics of actually implementing the ECPA reform principles announced today by the Digital Due Process Coalition, which PFF, CEI and Net Coalition all proudly signed on to along with a number of other think tanks, advocacy groups, and leading tech companies. Ryan and I explained earlier today how these proposals would Protect Americans’ Privacy by Restoring Constitutional Limits to Government.
As I note at the end of the article:
“This is an opportunity for President Obama to show that he understands President Reagan’s central lesson: ‘Government is not the solution to our problem—government is the problem,'” says Berin Szoka, an attorney at the Progress and Freedom Foundation. “These proposals offer a sensible, long-overdue way of protecting us from the real Big Brother, our government, without crippling law enforcement or the private companies that keep giving us all wonderful new content and services, mostly for free.”
This is a point Adam Thierer and I have made repeatedly in the debate over how to deal with concerns about online privacy. Check out our/my key pieces on this point:
- Online Advertising & User Privacy: Principles to Guide the Debate
- Privacy Trade-Offs: PFF Comments on December 7 FTC Privacy Workshop
- Targeted Online Advertising: What’s the Harm & Where Are We Heading?
- Chairman Leibowitz’s Disconnect on Privacy Regulation & the Future of News
- My comments on FCC’s Privacy Inquiry for National Broadband Plan
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.