Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Companies often promote consistent and reliable customer experiences. KLM touts itself as “the reliable airline” while Michelin touts its dependability “because so much is riding on your tires.” And now we have Yahoo, who announced that it will be increasing the social networking functionality in Yahoo Mail. Yahoo has the ability to promote consistency in [...]
Adam Thierer & I offered our initial thoughts upon first reading the discussion draft of the privacy bill introduced by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) & Cliff Stearns (R-FL). In PFF’s latest TechCast, I sat down to discuss the bill and my concerns about it with PFF’s VP for Communications, Mike Wendy: < p style=”text-align: center;”> [...]
By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka Opt-in mandates may soon be coming to an Internet near you! Rick Boucher, House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman, is expected to soon introduce the privacy bill he’s been working on behind closed doors for many months. At the heart of the bill is supposed to be a mandate [...]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka, Progress Snaphot 6.1 Stephanie Clifford of the New York Times posted a very interesting article this week summarizing a recent “on-the-record chat” the Times staff had with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chairman Jon Leibowitz and FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection chief David Vladeck. The interview [discussed by Braden here] is profoundly important in that [...]
A coalition of ten self-described “consumer and privacy advocacy organizations” today demanded legislation that would restrict the collection and use of data online for customizing advertising based on Internet users’ interests. I’ll have more to say on this but here are my initial comments: These so-called “consumer advocates” are actually anti-consumer elitists. Not only do [...]
Mediapost has published an interview I gave to Omar Tawakol, founder of the BlueKai registry entitled “User Empowerment, Not Regulation, Is The Answer to Privacy Concerns About Targeted Ads” in which I summarize the arguments Adam Thierer and I have been making since our “Principles to Guide the Debate” piece last September. We argue for [...]
Internet policy Shame Artist extraordinaire Chris Soghoian has struck again! Chris recently shamed the online advertising industry into improving their privacy practices with his Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt-Out (TACO) plug-in for Firefox. Now Chris has set his sight on the security practices of cloud service providers. A letter released this morning, signed by 37 leading [...]
As Berin mentioned last week, we have a new paper out on proposals to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998. We generically refer to those COPPA-expansion efforts as “COPPA 2.0.” Hence, the title of our paper: “COPPA 2.0: The New Battle over Privacy, Age Verification, Online Safety & Free Speech.” To [...]
Google’s new “Interest Based Advertising” (IBA) program represents the company’s first foray into what is generally called “Online Behavioral Advertising” (OBA): In order to deliver more relevant advertising, Google will begin tailoring ads delivered through AdSense on the Google Content Network (GCN) and YouTube.com (but not Google.com). This tailoring will be based on a profile [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
