Listening to this latest panel at the 2008 Tech Policy Summit has given me a great idea. This panel is focusing on the topic of privacy and features:
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD.com (Session Host)
Leslie Harris, President and CEO, Center for Democracy & Technology
Joanne McNabb, Chief, California Office of Privacy Protection
Jules Polonetsky, Chief Privacy Officer, AOL
Anyway, on to my idea. The panel concluded that privacy policies are complicated and incomprehensible, but at the same time they didn’t seem to believe that they could be simple. This makes sense to me. Privacy policies deal with myriad legal issues, they concern lots of information, and that information is constantly changing. So, it seems that we’re never going to boil down these agreements to two or three paragraphs, let alone a crisp, short privacy slogan.
But clearly the economy contains many complicated transactions and complicated products targeted at consumers. People buy cars and computers and both products are improving all the time–suggesting that consumers are selecting the good products leaving the poor products to fade away.
That said, how is it that people pick these things? I know that many people come to me when they buy a computer and I advise them since I know a thing or two about silicon filled boxes. My dad’s a gear-head and advises people about cars. But outside of those informal networks there are other resources for buyers. CNET rates a ton of tech products. Car & Driver rates cars. Consumer Reports rates everything.
A small part of the tech industry, video games, already has a ratings service. It helps parents find good video games for their kids without playing them.
Why not start an ESRB for social networks and other information-collecting sites? I don’t think crowd-sourcing or other “Web 2.0” methods would be best for this, instead I think the industry could form a 501(c)3 and throw in some money to fund an independent rater. Or it could sell a publication like Consumer Reports or even like the securities rater AMBest. Either way, such a group staffed by lawyers, policy experts, and professional editors could be an excellent resource for consumers.
Such an organization would also help to prevent sweeping privacy standard that could have real negative effects. Whether we’re able to say what data should or should not be retained, sold, and shared today is something of which I’m unsure. Extend that question into the future and I’m even more unsure. Whatever lines we can draw between appropriate and inappropriate uses of data today will likely be antiquated in a few week given the speed of online innovation.
Healthcare is probably the best example of where privacy standards have hurt other desirable outcomes. While health data is private and protected, it’s also hard for doctors to access, hard for patients to access, and hard to compare–even anonymously–in order to gain new knowledge of disease and health. Privacy has trumped life in this case!
Providing ample information to consumers along with honest, objective analysis would fill a huge market need and push the industry in the right direction. A rating organization seems like a great way to do this. Maybe a project for EPIC?
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.