Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Do-Not-Track is not inconceivable itself. It’s like the word “inconceivable” in the movie The Princess Bride. I do not think it means what people think it means—how it is meant to work and how it is likely to offer poor results. Take Mike Swift’s reporting for MercuryNews.com on a study showing that online advertising companies [...]
At the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference, I moderated a panel on “Do Not Track.” I tried to make sure it was fun, and I think it was. Among other things, yes, I called Ed Felten, “baby.” Check it out.
This podcast, put together by the high-performance folks at the Performance Marketing Association, is pretty good, though I do use the word “hedonic” at one point, which is a bit much.
The Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference—the original privacy conference—is June 14th through 16th at the Georgetown University Law School here in D.C. It has a neat layout this year, with a focus on each of the topics—computers, freedom, and privacy—on each of its three days. I’ve always found that it’s a rollicking conference at which [...]
As Sonia Arrison mentioned here on Friday, the State of California is currently considering legislation that could, in the name of enhancing online privacy, impose burdensome new regulatory mandates on the Internet. Sonia has a nice column at TechNewsWorld discussing this. I also wrote about the same issue in my Forbes column this week, which [...]
Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) have released a discussion draft of their forthcoming “Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011.” I’ve only had a chance to give it a quick read, but the bill, which is intended to help safeguard kids’ privacy online, has two major regulatory provisions of interest: (1) New [...]
I’ve already Tweeted about it, but if you are following Internet privacy debates and have not yet had the chance to read Lauren Weinstein‘s new paper, “Do-Not-Track, Doctor Who, and a Constellation of Confusion,” it is definitely worth a look. Weinstein, founder of the Privacy Forum, zeroes in on two related issue that I have [...]
FTC Commissioner J. Thomas Rosch puts the brakes on some of the Do-Not-Track excitement that has been bubbling up in this (wouldn’t you know it) Advertising Age piece. The concept of do not track has not been endorsed by the commission or, in my judgment, even properly vetted yet. In actuality, in a preliminary staff [...]
Today, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on “The State of Online Consumer Privacy.” The push for online privacy regulation has real momentum, as proposed privacy legislation from numerous lawmakers, a Department of Commerce report proposing a compulsory Do Not Track mechanism to regulate business marketing practices, and the Obama Administration’s proposed “Privacy [...]
It seems peculiar to me that some of the same individuals and groups who so vociferously opposed a “broadcast flag” technological mandate in past years are now in a mad rush to have federal policymakers mandate a “Do Not Track” regulatory regime for privacy purposes. The broadcast flag debate, you will recall, centered around the [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
