I originally started studying and writing about privacy policy because I thought the advocates in Washington, and Congress itself, didn’t have a full grasp of the issues. They were treating privacy as a political football, and grinding their political, ideological, and self-interest axes on “the privacy issue.”
Illustrating how that problem may persist, Declan McCullagh has a strong rip on the Electronic Privacy Information Center on his Iconoclast blog. It seems that EPIC and some of its allies recently filed a strongly worded complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about problems with AskEraser that no longer exist.
The AskEraser cookie originally had a time-stamp that could act like a unique identifier, so Ask.com changed it. Nonetheless, in went EPIC’s “Complaint and Request for Injunction, Request for Investigation and for Other Relief.”
The government’s undirected, surveillance-heavy overreaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks brought me together with lots of folks with whom I disagree on lesser issues like private-sector regulation and privacy practices. I often joke that people will know their privacy is pretty well protected when I’m back to fighting with EPIC and the ACLU. Well, I don’t intend to pick a fight now, because there’s still too much to be done, but a privacy advocacy group shouldn’t just be an FTC-complaint mill.
Declan speculates that EPIC files with the FTC rather than suing (there are some arguable causes of action) because courts would sanction them for frivolous filings. Prospectively calling EPIC’s future bluffs, he says: “The next time you see them complaining to the FTC about some alleged wrongdoing, remember these attorneys’ odd reluctance to litigate.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.