Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Today I filed roughly 30 pages worth of comments with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in its proceeding on “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: a Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policy Makers.” [Other comments filed in the proceeding can be found here.] Down below, I’ve attached the Table of Contents from [...]
Rep. Jackie Speier introduced legislation today that would require the Federal Trade Commission to establish standards for a “Do Not Track” mechanism and require online data collectors to obey consumer opt-outs through such a tool. As I’ll explain in more detail in my comments on the FTC’s privacy report (due next Friday), I’ve argued for the [...]
You have to read all the way to the end to get exactly what the New York Times is getting at in its Sunday editorial, “Netizens Gain Some Privacy.” Congress should require all advertising and tracking companies to offer consumers the choice of whether they want to be followed online to receive tailored ads, and [...]
Today the Mercatus Center has released a short new paper I have authored on “Unappreciated Benefits of Advertising and Commercial Speech.” I begin the piece by noting that: Federal policy makers, state legislators, and state attorneys general have recently shown interest in regulating commercial advertising and marketing. Several new regulatory initiatives are being proposed, or are already underway, that could [...]
Via @csoghoian (who can be wrathful if you don’t attribute), Adobe buries the lede in its blog post about privacy improvements to the Flash player. They’re working with the most popular browser vendors on integrating control of “local shared objects”—more commonly known as “Flash cookies”—into the interface. Users control of Flash cookies will soon be [...]
I laughed out loud when I read the following line in Harlan Yu’s post, “Some Technical Clarifications About Do Not Track“: “[T]he Do Not Track header compels servers to cooperate, to proactively refrain from any attempts to track the user.” (Harlan’s a pal, but I’m plain-spoken with friends just like everyone else, so here goes, [...]
[Here's an oped of mine that recently ran on Reuters. Readers will recognize many of these themes and arguments since I have developed them here on the TLF many times before.] Privacy Regulation and the “Free” Internet by Adam Thierer, Mercatus Center at George Mason University Would you like to pay $20 a month for [...]
Advocates of regulation will credit regulators for the fact that major browser providers Microsoft and Mozilla are going after online “tracking.” In forthcoming versions of their browsers, they will provide controls that protect against unwanted monitoring even better than the controls that now exist. When consumer advocates cluster in Washington, D.C., asking federal agencies to [...]
This is a response to Nick Carr’s recent piece, “The Attack on Do Not Track,” in which he goes after me for some comments I made in this essay about the trade-offs at work in the privacy and online advertising debates. In his critique of my essay, he argues: What the FTC is suggesting is [...]
This morning, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its eagerly-awaited Preliminary FTC Staff Report on Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: A Proposed Framework for Businesses and Policymakers. As expected, the agency has generally endorsed an expanded regulatory regime to govern online data collection and advertising efforts in the name of protecting [...]
May 23, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
