Don’t let the facetious headline fool you: I welcome news stories like this New York Times piece (via Ars), which reports on the amount of data major online firms collect.
It gives us tech sophisticates some more information, but, more importantly, it starts to educate the lay public that they are part of an information economy whether they like it or not. This will stimulate them on the margin to make choices about where they surf, whether they accept cookies, and so on. Putting this information in the hands of the public pits these online firms against one another to seek trust with the public, such as by controlling their data collection, ensuring the public that the data won’t be misused, and so on.
The marketplace continues to lag in its provision of privacy, in part because of the technical difficulty of determining how things work, what data goes where, etc. With the press overwhelmed by the problem of figuring this stuff out, it hasn’t been able to put the public in a position to act. In a small way, this article starts to clear that fog. A welcome development indeed.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.