Schneier on Data Collection and “Deception”

by Adam Thierer on April 28, 2009 · Comments

I’ve been quite depressed to witness Bruce Schneier’s ongoing conversion from opponent of government intervention in the high-tech economy (at least on encryption) to vociferous proponent (at least in terms of privacy regulation).  Anyway, his latest cheerleading piece for government privacy regulation in The Wall Street Journal includes lots of fear-mongering about private website data collection for, God forbid, purposes of trying to better target advertising and market us products we might actually want.

Schneier uses the term “deceptive” several times in the piece to refer to privacy policies that don’t make it explicitly clear that some of the information you leave on a site, or that is collected preemptively by them, will be used to craft more targeted marketing efforts.  Like many other would-be privacy regulators, Schneier seemingly wants companies to fly blimps over your desk as you surf the Net with big signs that basically say: ‘Hey stupid, your info may be used to market you stuff.’  It’s hard to be against more disclosure, of course — and most sites spell out what they do with data in their privacy policies — but it never seems to be good enough for most privacy advocates, who paint consumers out to be mindless sheep who cannot be trusted to make wise decisions for themselves.  Sorry, but I just don’t buy it.

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Comments Posted in: Advertising & Marketing, Privacy, Security & Government Surveillance

Privacy Trade-offs: Why We Don’t Really Care about Our Privacy as Much as We Say

by Adam Thierer on March 1, 2009 · Comments

I was reading this Sun Magazine interview with the always-interesting Nick Carr and I liked what he had to say here about the public’s inconsistent views on privacy:

If you ask people whether they’re concerned about the ability of the government or corporations to gather information about them online, they’ll say yes. But if you look at how they behave online, they don’t display much fear of exposing themselves. What that says about people — and it’s true for most of us — is that we will readily forgo our privacy in exchange for convenient and useful services, particularly if they’re free. That’s a trade-off you make all the time on the Internet. Even if people were more conscious of how this information might be exploited, I doubt most would change their behavior.

This reminds me of the classic “hamburgers for DNA” quip from security expert Bruce Schneier who once famously noted that:

If McDonalds in the United States would give away a free hamburger for an DNA sample they would be handing out free lunches around the clock. So people care about their privacy, but they don’t care to pay for it. In the United States we have frequent shopper cards, which will track down people’s purchases for a 5 cents discount on a can of tuna fish. I don’t think you can convince the public to care about it.

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Comments Posted in: Privacy, Security & Government Surveillance