The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown: Data Privacy Day 2012 at the Churchill Club

This year, Data Privacy Day stretched into Data Privacy Week. I celebrated by participating in a Churchill Club panel on The Collection of Online Consumer Data: The Good, The Bad, and The Unknown. The discussion centered on consumer interest in protecting personal data and the importance of striking the right balance between regulation and innovation. January has been such a busy month for data privacy issues that we had several recent events to noodle…

First, there was the SOPA kerfuffle which resulted in the withdrawl of the legislation. My take here.

Then, in U.S. v Jones, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the government cannot attach tracking devices to your personal effects, like your car. Expect more privacy cases given the concurrences by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Alito on the reasonable expectation of privacy when third-parties handle your data.

Then, Google announced a new privacy policy which says they’ll be unifying all your information across all Google services, including search, emails, and calendars to deliver more “intuitive” results. The automatic opt-in feature means that the cost of non-participation means dragging yourself back to Yahoo!, bing or *gasp* AOL for email and search. Needless to say, the announcement is causing quite a stir.

Then, as if Microsoft and Google were coordinating, Microsoft Trustworthy Computing released survey data saying that everything you do online from “responding to emails and texts to clicking the ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ buttons on favorite Web pages, uploading photos and making purchases online” contributes to the creation of your online reputation.

Then, the EU proposed a massive overhaul of their data protection laws, which is troubling for a number of reasons. Chief among my concerns is the oversimplification of privacy policies; an attempt to export their privacy regime outside the EU; and their attempt to create a right to be forgotten which could collide with our right to know. The tension between competing values, like disclosure and discretion is something I discussed last summer.

Then, the U.S. Commerce Department and FTC promised two separate communiqués on U.S. privacy policy before February 1st. FTC Commissioner Julie Brill participated in Facebook’s Privacy Day webcast and noted the agency’s continued interest in privacy audits for past offenders like Google and Facebook. Commissioner Brill also called upon data brokers to share personal, public data with consumers and offer them an opportunity to correct or amend inaccurate information. TrueRep, an Intelius service, allows just that—awareness and control of your own public information (more here).

So, we had much to chew on at the Churchill Club event. Check out the video:

The panel was moderated by Jules Polonetsky (Co-chair and Director, Future of Privacy Forum) and featured Nick Bicanic (CEO and Founder, Echoecho Media), Jules Cohen (Director of Online Privacy, Microsoft), Nicole Ozer (Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California), Paul Schwartz (Faculty Director, Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, UC Berkeley).

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Chief Privacy Officer