Thursday, February 23, 2012

White House privacy push seeks cooperation





WASHINGTON | Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:09pm EST

(Reuters) - The White House proposed on Thursday a "privacy bill of rights" that would give consumers more control over their data but relies heavily for now on voluntary commitments by Internet companies like Google Inc and Facebook.


The White House on February 23 proposed a “bill of rights” that would give online consumers a greater privacy protection and government a greater power to police Internet firms.

Obama claimed that as the Internet grows, consumer trust is essential for the growth of the digital economy.  Therefore an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important.  internet companies such as Facebook and Google have been accused for tracking customer’s online activities and then used to generate advertising revenue. 

36 state attorneys sent letter to Google on wed expressing the concern about Google’s plan to share user’s information across their products without giving consumers an opt-in-option. 

Many internet companies agreed to give consumers a more privacy.  Although, there are doubts about implementation and enforcement. 

As most of us conceive that the digital economy is growing, it is still in an immature stage.  There haven’t been much regulatory on it and there is a risk of system failing, due to how the information online is handled.  We learned in class that there is a market failure if there is a lack of information.  Thankfully, Internet provides information and made our life more efficient.  If internet companies are upfront with people about how they handle the information they collected, advertising revenue wouldn’t be hurt and people won’t feel uncomfortable, but it is an impossible scenario.  Like the article says, the implementation and enforcement of “online bill of rights” is doubtable.    

                

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

It will be interesting to see how the government is going to regulate the internet. I think it is going to be too hard for them to regulate it because technology is continuously changing and internet companies can find short cuts of the regulation. This is an example of what we talked about in class, is it appropriate for the government to intervene or regulate it? There is a lack of information to consumers about how their information is being used online so in theory it would be a market failure of lack of information. It will be interesting to see if the government intervenes and how the internet companies react.

Anonymous said...

I agree that countries will struggle with regulating the internet. It may be simpler to regulate the official policies of large firms such as Google and Facebook but near impossible at a larger level. For example, China's attempt at censorship has numerous loopholes and cannot maintain control with all websites. However, they have been working with or banning internet companies. I think that, at some point in the future, the government will have specific agencies to deal with this - if more regulation is their ultimate goal.

Emma Lisull said...

It's especially interesting due to the inherent international nature of the internet. United States laws do not completely coincide with the internet-related laws of other countries, but the United States has expressed a distaste for censorship in other areas. As a result, it is simple for internet sites to base themselves in an area with more lenient laws than the United States, while still getting through to American users. While that doesn't directly relate to American-based Facebook and Google, it is an element that makes it inherently difficult and awkward in policing the internet.

Kim Eckart said...

I agree with Stephanie. I think government regulation of the internet could be difficult without specific institutions or legislation put in place dealing with some of the big corporate search engines or facebook. However, the very nature of the internet is global, making it very difficult to regulate all the far reaching aspects. Also as Shannon noted, technology is constantly evolving and would likely find a way around any regulation put in place.

Sijia He said...

The legal actions towards online business is inevitable, but at the same time, difficult to attain. How could government regulate the digital circulation effectively and safely, also assuring the privacy information of consumers? I agree with Stephanie, the nature of the internet already decided the difficulties of the regulation, which will be, mostly manipulated by people.

Anonymous said...

Government control is usually somethings frowned upon. However, in this case I think it might be both effective and necessary

Anonymous said...

It will be hard to regulate internet companies, unless the government directly interfere with the companies. As far as I know, China is regulating their internet users to control the society and help domestic internet companies. In the US, just looking at this case, the government is trying to protect online consumers, but who knows what..(maybe related to 2012 presidency election).

Anonymous said...

To regulate the internet is a tough task that government will have a hard time to come up with an effective system/policy. However, even though it is hard to regulate the internet, I think it is necessary to take some measurements to protect customers. Furthermore, in terms of my view, the public failure of asymmetry information does not include customers’ privacy; rather the information should be defined as more relevant business data such as financial resources, demographic data, or strategies that companies applied to generate profits. However, all those information should not harm customers benefits or their privacy.