Intelius - Privacy

Privacy Identity Innovation Conference 2012: The Emergent Privacy Industrial Complex

glynch — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:56:49 +0000

The Privacy Identity Innovation (pii) conference is THE eclectic gathering of wonks, geeks, and suits. Seattle was lucky to host the third pii event last week. pii was lucky to score the most beautiful weather Seattle has offered since last September. I was lucky enough to attend and participate. Win-win-win.

I’ll be recapping the pii 2012 conference with Hibe’s Brendan Charles on Tuesday’s #PrivChat (topics here) at 12 pm EDT/9 am PDT. Please join.

A Growing Privacy-Industrial Complex

The theme of my pii lightning talk was a call for balance amidst a growing privacy-industrial complex (slides, video) — a term first coined by Jeff Jarvis last year. The privacy industry is comprised of professionals from legal, compliance, risk, ethics, audit, security, and operations. Since 2000, it has been growing at nearly 50% annually; growth that would make any CEO blush.

Sure, privacy professionals are certainly necessary but hardly sufficient to guide us through this burgeoning era of social media. Their background is often too specialized and too isolated from where technical innovation occurs. Privacy professionals need to be agile across the entire organization and have a strong voice throughout the product lifecycle. Archimedes said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.” That stand can’t only be in the General Counsel’s office.

Also, as President Eisenhower warned with regard to the military-industrial complex, there’s a risk of survival bias. So, as privacy regulations grow in complexity, more privacy professionals will be needed. For example, how much work has been created to understand and comply with the new E.U. Cookie Directive that can be enforced starting May 26? Why must every privacy nail be hit with a regulatory hammer?

The Pursuit of Balance

The metaphor for my talk, was Da Vinci’s iconic Vitruvian Man. The proportioned body, tender heart, and insightful mind of Vitruvius offers interesting parallels into the struggles we’re facing in the privacy world today.

The technologist is the forceful arms and legs that drive innovation. The humanitarian — philosopher, journalist, economist, anthropologist, economist, and historian — is the heart that tempers the restless drive to innovate. And, it is the mind, which must balance the body and the heart. But balance is not a condition, it’s a pursuit like the one we know from that peculiar Epicurean phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “pursuit of happiness”.

In his 1967 treatise Privacy and Freedom, Alan Westin said: “Each individual is continually engaged in a personal adjustment process in which he balances the desire for privacy with the desire for disclosure and communication of himself to others.” Prescient.

A Balanced Discourse…

Preceding my pii talk was Andrew Keen, whose new book Digital Vertigo, strikes just such a humanitarian chord. Andrew, in his interview with Larry Downes, described today’s technology as a MacGuffin — a literary device that drives the characters but not the plot. He argues that technology is driving us but we need to look through it in order to see where this plot is really going.

The following day, Microsoft’s Marc Davis talked about how we might move from digital feudalism to enlightenment by wrapping personal information in metadata to better control it within the public, joint, and private spheres — a subject I’ve written about here. Marc has proposed an information metadata system to move us into such a digital enlightenment. Might this be a step in the right direction?

Marc challenged my contention that privacy might never be solved (see my comments on the Data Protection panel at ~10:12). Well, even though no one has proven that privacy is an NP-hard problem, I stand by my statement that privacy is very complex because people are complex (and their language is, too).

The discourse also included a lively exchange on Twitter at #pii2012. Check it out.

#pii2012 Final Thoughts

As Larry Lessig taught us, “Code is Law”. And since the law encodes our society’s values, technology’s code and humanity’s values are deeply intertwined. We can’t separate them any more than we can separate our body from our mind from our heart.

pii has proven a great venue for spirited, informed, and respectful debate. Too often, we fall into this gotcha, zero-sum game of ad hominem attacks and scare tactics that does a disservice to the profound journey we’re on. Impassioned argument is the friction that sharpens the ax of progress. If we are to find a wise path forward, this discourse between technologists and humanitarians must continue.

More from Jim Adler
Chief Privacy Officer, Intelius

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Privacy: A Transatlantic Culture Clash

glynch — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:26:13 +0000

The difference between European and American privacy approaches is typically framed as E.U. aspiration versus U.S. pragmatism:

The E.U. views privacy as a source “right of personality” versus the U.S. mosaic of privacy torts;
the E.U. has comprehensive, federal law versus U.S. spotty, sectoral statutes; and
the E.U. has spotty enforcement at the nation-state level versus U.S. rigorous enforcement through private right of action, state enforcement through attorneys general, and federal regulation through the Federal Trade Commission.

As Don Cohn has said, “hell on earth is E.U. law and U.S. enforcement.” There’s some truth to these characterizations, but they miss the point. The E.U. and U.S. simply disagree on the priority of two key cultural values, disclosure and discretion — that is, freedoms of the public (i.e., speech, press, assembly) and freedoms of the person (i.e., equal treatment, privacy). We get mired in technocratic detail without recognizing this fundamental cultural difference.

Last week, the European data protection authorities came to Silicon Valley to discuss access and use of online personal data. The clash of values, between rights of the public and rights of the private, could not be more clear. At the Berkeley Law Privacy Forum, Peter Hustinx (European Data Protection Supervisor) said:

“When data have been published or have been shared and it is within your [company’s] power to get them back, you have to make reasonable effort to get the spirit back in the bottle.”

Mr. Hustinx seems to be saying that even if information is published, there’s an obligation to re-cloak it. For example, if two Twitter users get into a heated fight (hey, it happens), and both agree to delete their exchange, Twitter should make “reasonable effort to get the spirit back in the bottle” and delete the tweets. But what if these public tweets are retweeted far and wide? Does Twitter have the obligation to delete them, too? I don’t think so.

What is noticeably absent from this point of view is the public’s right to history, knowledge, and lessons learned. Sure, a public fight often results in public humiliation of the combatants (or at least the loser), and they want to erase the experience from the public record. That’s a mistake. Many of life’s lessons have been learned by witnessing (or sometimes engaging in) playground, barroom, and online fights.

What’s more, the duty to have our public mistakes remembered isn’t just important to our social fabric, it’s a key ingredient to technology innovation. Entrepreneurs aren’t deterred by risking the embarrassment that comes with public failure. To paraphrase famed marketer Geoffrey Moore, please fail publicly so we can learn from your humiliation. We’ll forgive you and thank you.

More from Jim Adler
Chief Privacy Officer, Intelius

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Strata 2012: Is Privacy a Big Data Prison?

glynch — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:38:06 +0000

I just returned from O’Reilly Media’s latest soiree, StrataConf 2012: Making Data Work. My panel, If Data Wants to Be Free, is Privacy a Prison? focused on design frameworks for “responsible innovation” to guide data professionals through the perilous territory of data collection, access, and usage. Yeah, I know, ambitious …

I was joined by privacy researcher and NYU doctoral student Solon Barocas [BTW, can’t help but plug Solon’s doctoral chair, Helen Nissenbaum, who had a significant influence on the recent White House Privacy Framework]. Solon tempered my pragmatic, more libertarian perspective with deep thinking—a good combo I think. The session was moderated by the multi-tasker Alex Howard of O’Reilly Media, who was able to keep Solon and I on task and take audience questions from Twitter. Impresssive. You can see the real-time audience discussion on the Twitter #strataprivacy hashtag.

In an effort to steer the privacy conversation away from its predominant (though distracting) themes of data collection and access, fears of a future dystopia, and the complexities of law, our discussion began by examining the implications of big data gaffes through real-world use-cases. Using the Places-Players-Perils Framework lens to focus the cases, we discussed how societal norms should be mapped to the growing power of big data.

And boy, did we have a bunch of recent gaffes, flubs and faux pas to choose from. Take for example, the case of the two cheeky British tourists who were denied entrance into the U.S. for (if only in jest) threats. Or, the FBI cutting back GPS surveillance in the wake of the Supreme Court’s US v Jones decision. Or, that Target knows a teen is pregnant before her parents do. Or, the unification of Google’s services which links all user information across all accounts. Is this 2012 or 1984?

In all seriousness, big data pros can stay off privacy third rails and out of the headlines with a little thought and sensitivity. For example, in the Target teen pregnancy case, Solon made the point that Target could have just asked customers if they wanted coupons during their pregnancy. If the data analysts would have thought about how personal pregnancy is, they simply would have asked. After all, targeted coupons when expecting a kitchen remodel is bit less sensitive than when expecting expecting. Duh.

Even processing of public data can lead to discovery of private information. In fact, from the audience, Daniel Tunkelang asked the provocative question whether the inference of private facts from public data is a new definition of thoughtcrime? BTW, Daniel has a good Strata wrap up today on his blog.

The spontaneous emergence of these weighty issues is why data professionals need shorthand ways to easily think about the societal impact of their work. Such a framework would need to go beyond default “procedural protections” (like the Fair Information Practice Principles) to “substantive protections” that evaluate possible product impact at design-time and track actual impact as the product moves into the market.

More from Jim Adler
Chief Privacy Officer

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

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

glynch — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:22:29 +0000

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).

More from Jim Adler
Chief Privacy Officer

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Intelius Chief Privacy Officer's LinkedIn Tech Talk

glynch — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:30:36 +0000

It's always refreshing to hear insights from our Chief Privacy Officer Jim Adler. Last week he gave his Accidental Chief Privacy Officer talk at LinkedIn (video, slides).

In his talk, Jim revamped the section on regulation, attempting to deconstruct privacy framing into spaces, players, and consequences. In his words, "the space defines whether we’re engaged in a public, private, or shared experience with players of varying power disparity where consequences can be assessed."

On Wednesday, Jim participated in a panel at pii2011 Venture Forum on Social Sharing and the Data-Driven Economy. The panel was hosted by AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher. Jim was joined by David Glazer, director of engineering for Google+; Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners; and Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures (video).

Stay tuned for Jim’s talk at the Strata Conference in March on how we might better think about data-use, its benefits and consequences. Thanks for your insights, Jim!

More from Jim Adler

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

The Accidental Chief Privacy Officer

glynch — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 22:29:33 +0000

Earlier this week, Intelius Chief Privacy Officer Jim Adler spoke at O’Reilly’s Strata Conference. His talk, The Accidental Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), discussed how the industrial privacy professional is evolving from a compliance enforcer to a product innovator. Here are the slides and interview with O’Reilly’s Alex Howard (@digiphile):

Jim Adler interviewed at Strata NY 2011

The key takeaway from the talk (see summary slide) is that the privacy pro is becoming a key evangelist for responsible innovation within fast-moving, high technology organizations. To be successful, four lessons:

Innovation is a team sport. Communication is key. So talk and (more importantly) listen to your toughest critics, both inside and outside your organization. They’ll better understand your perspective and you’ll often get great ideas.
Build a confluence of influence. Good decisions come from every corner of the business, early in the product cycle. Find the members of any team that are inventive, collaborative, and capable of creating the Reality Distortion Field (used so effectively by Steve Jobs) that’s so vital to disruptive innovation.
Be the happy warrior. Innovation, by definition, changes the status quo and makes some people uncomfortable. Engage with them in a constructive, respectful way inline with Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement.
Find clarity in the confusion. Use math, data, and history to find the clarity within the confusion. Privacy issues are especially difficult. As Jeff Jarvis points out in his new book, Public Parts, even defining privacy is a journey through an Escher maze. Jeff has a great, well referenced chapter on What Is Privacy? that illustrates the perennial struggle we all have navigating the privacy maze.

The good news is that the privacy labyrinth can be traversed with sufficient situational assessment, data analysis, and historical perspective. Then, to remix metaphors, you can be that excited child in the room of manure who finds that elusive pony.

0 comments – Read/add comments

Bookmark/Search this post with:

Data Feast, Privacy Famine: What Is a Healthy Data Diet?

glynch — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:46:02 +0000

Earlier this month, Intelius' Chief Privacy Officer & General Manager of Data Systems spoke at the Wolfram Data Summit on what we in the data privacy community might learn from a century’s history of food policy. Here’s his abstract and presentation:

Data is the new medium of social communication and is forcing a healthy debate to define public/private boundaries, fair access, and appropriate use. Like food, social communication (and the data that drives it) is a necessity for humanity’s survival. This talk will discuss the key ingredients to avoid the empty calories.

Data Feast, Privacy Famine: What Is a Healthy Data Diet?
View more presentations from Jim Adler

0 comments – Read/add comments
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious

Digg

StumbleUpon

Propeller

Reddit

Magnoliacom

Furl

Facebook

Google

Yahoo

Technorati

read more

With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility: Why Privacy is a Big Deal

glynch — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:29:36 +0000

Jim Adler, Intelius Chief Privacy Officer and GM of Data Systems, will be speaking at the Inman Data Summit on Monday, July 25. The Inman Data Summit is an invitation-only event designed for C-level executives.

With Big Data Comes Big Responsibility: Why Privacy is a Big Deal

With widespread media coverage about data breaches and several proposed bills making their way through the U.S. Congress, privacy is a hot-button topic that you can’t afford to ignore. How you handle the information you’re entrusted with can be a make-or-break proposition for your brand. Learn how to get personal with big data while mastering the legal, ethical and technological challenges. What are best practices for collecting consumer data and tracking your Web visitors? How do you glean the most from their online behavior without being “creepy?”

Moderator: Melanie Wyne, Senior Technology Policy Representative, National Association of Realtors®, @nartech
Jim Adler, Chief Privacy Officer and GM, Data Systems, Intelius, @Jim_Adler
Terence Craig, CEO, PatternBuilders, @terencecraig
Michelle Dennedy, Founder, iDennedy Project
Joanne McNabb, Chief, California Office of Privacy Protection
Nicole Ozer, Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California
0 comments – Read/add comments
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious

Digg

StumbleUpon

Propeller

Reddit

Magnoliacom

Furl

Facebook

Google

Yahoo

Technorati

read more

What would the U.S. Founding Fathers do in the age of social media?

glynch — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:25:47 +0000

Jim Adler is the chief privacy officer at Intelius. Jim wrote this article as a guest columnist for the Seattle Times on July 4, 2011.
Today we celebrate the 235th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It got me thinking about how our American commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness applies to today's high-tech, fast-paced, social-media world, especially for privacy and speech rights.

So let's drill into this right to privacy, a subject that has captured national attention lately in both the mainstream media and Congress. The Constitution provides for no such privacy right among us citizens. The Bill of Rights does offer privacy protections from the government. The Third Amendment protects our homes from government intrusion, and the Fourth Amendment protects our homes from unreasonable government searches and seizures.

But the Constitution doesn't provide for privacy protections among our fellow citizens. For that, we're largely left to the common law. This more pedestrian, common-law idea of privacy was discussed in "The Right to Privacy" (Harvard Law Review, 1890) by the future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and partner Samuel Warren.Warren and Brandeis quote from an 1880 treatise by Michigan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cooley who introduced a "right to be let alone" in the context of common law torts — basically the 19th-century version of "don't tase me, bro."

So, privacy embodies an essential value of discretion — the expectation "to be let alone" by government and citizen. Of course, in tension with this value is a value of disclosure, embodied by the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of press, individual speech and peaceful assembly.

It is within this uniquely American tapestry that we grapple with the deluge of new technological devices and social media. Should we have the right to have ourselves erased from the Internet, surf without being tracked, make an unrecorded phone call or conduct an anonymous search? As parents, how do we balance the responsibility to keep our kids safe online with respect for their privacy?

The good news is that we've been wrestling with these heady issues for 235 years, and this discretion/disclosure heritage can really help.

For example, when it comes to "smart grid," I'm a privacy-conservative. Smart grid is a set of technologies that monitors the power usage of the appliances in our homes. Frankly, my home (and body) are places of the highest discretion. How much time I spend staring at the fridge with the door open is my business. In the home, discretion rules, period.

But when in public, disclosure is king. I was leaving a baseball game a few weeks ago, and a woman was taking pictures of the fans as they left the stadium. In today's world, I would expect my picture to be uploaded, tagged and available to anyone online. It's the Internet equivalent of the small-town refrain: "Hey, did you see Jim at the game?"

Social media is less than a decade old. We are at the beginning of this journey to map our traditional values to this new medium. The question is whether this medium can support our values? And, if so, how?

In a recent New Yorker piece, "Small Change — why the revolution will not be tweeted," Malcolm Gladwell criticizes social media for favoring vast, "weak-tie" relationships where disclosure is maximal and discretion is minimal.

He contrasts these relationships to small, "strong-tie" groups that enjoy deep trust because of the secrets they keep. Gladwell describes the relationship of the Greensboro Four who led the 1960 lunch counter sit-ins in North Carolina. They discreetly discussed the idea of a sit-in for nearly a month over beers smuggled into their dorm room. The day before the sit-in, they challenged each other in the most in-your-face way when one of them asked: "Are you guys chicken or not?"

There is historic power that emerges from breaking the tension between discretion and disclosure. Our founders engaged in a similar social dynamic as the Greensboro Four — brutally honest disclosure among themselves and saintly discretion with everyone else.

The values of privacy and speech, discretion and disclosure were at play 235 years ago in Philadelphia, 51 years ago in Greensboro, and we Americans are reflexively shaping social media to support them today. These are the values that allow us to trust each other, to challenge each other, and ultimately to depend on each other. Let's not forget that on this Independence Day.

Happy Fourth!
0 comments – Read/add comments
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious

Digg

StumbleUpon

Propeller

Reddit

Magnoliacom

Furl

Facebook

Google

Yahoo

Technorati

read more

Can Privacy Advocates and Information Brokers Strike a Balance?

tlien — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:24:49 +0000

School teachers used to warn students that any bad grades they received would be forever noted on their infamous permanent record. In a digital era where social networking sites dominate the internet, and privacy has become more of a luxury than a necessity, individuals everywhere have much more to worry about than a bad report card. In the endless controversy regarding our first amendment right versus consumer privacy rights, the 20^th Annual CFP (Computers, Freedom, and Privacy) Conference brought together rights activists, companies and attorneys from a variety of backgrounds in hopes of striking a balance between online information brokers and privacy.

The argument between free speech and privacy is in many ways two sides of the same coin. Consumer advocacy groups argue that not only are consumers unaware of how their personal information is being collected and used, but they also cannot do anything to change this. On the other hand, certain attorneys, large search engines and information commerce companies cite that while privacy is valued, so is safety and trust to the people you are interacting with on a daily basis. Luckily, both sides support forums like CFP that can create functional transparency in the public information industry and can help define and clarify the large gray area that is the foundation for endless lawsuits and controversy.

In a CFP panel titled, Online Information Brokers and Privacy: Where’s the Balance, representatives of non-profit consumer advocacy organizations like the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the World Privacy Forum instilled concern in viewers by alluding to specific anecdotes where public records of individuals (such as witnesses or domestic violence witnesses) have led to harassment and identity theft. Generally speaking, these activist groups aim to spread awareness and advise consumers on how to protect their privacy rights. They also stated how public records can pose security concerns because of the way fraudulent businesses in the past have used data in malicious ways.

Intelius Chief Privacy Officer, Jim Adler, served on the other end of the panel working together with privacy activists to create a balance and ultimately find a way to better serve the needs of consumers. Adler noted that Intelius is not only aware of emerging concerns, but is also interested in increasing communication and collaboration with rights advocates to reach a middle ground. In addition, he noted that the company understands that the higher level of transparency being created by social media and the internet also means privacy issues that need to be addressed. For these reasons, Intelius has developed specific policies to differentiate itself from many other online information companies. While other businesses do not give you the option of deleting your information (citing free speech), Intelius has a free opt-out policy where individuals (i.e. threatened witnesses, law enforcement, and domestic violence victims) can remove themselves, no questions asked.

Different from a large amount of information brokers being attacked by activists, Intelius does not sell lists of information. Instead, they act as an information retailer that buys lists, gathers information and sells it one at a time to consumers in hopes of providing insight and security. Intelius, Adler states, believes that in order to “strike this balance, you’ll need to be able to have an environment where you can innovate responsibly… trust the individuals you interact with, and provide people with valuable services,” requiring industry collaboration. Ultimately, he believes that it is necessary to work together with privacy organizations to use public records in proactive ways that ultimately empower consumers. However, even though Intelius can help you remove your name from their database, there are still hundreds of other companies willing to give out your information for a price.

In the midst of a social media phenomenon, consumer advocacy groups show how free basic public records have recently transformed into more robust reports from aggregators like Spokeo.com, who compile a wide range of information, including personal information from social networking sites. The average consumer, they argue, is unaware of how much of the personal information is online and how it is being used. In a new age of modern permanent records, popular sites like Facebook and Twitter are the face of a hidden world of commercial data brokers. Moreover, not all information is accurate, and even if consumers are aware, they are unable to erase or correct their personal records. As a company dedicated to ultimately providing customers with a valuable service, Adler declared “the next step is to give you transparency to the info that’s out there, know what your digital footprint is, and then provide a way to comment, dispute and correct (it)”.

Privacy advocate organizations also noted there is a wide spectrum of information commerce companies that make up the industry, and not all can be placed in the same negatively perceived category. The very idea that certain companies, like Intelius, were interested in participating in such a conference sheds light upon companies and their willingness to address their consumers concerns.

Forums like CFP are able to bring together all sides of the issue, and through industry cooperation, increase the likelihood of creating clear definitions and viable solutions. Both consumer privacy activists and information brokers support an approach that requires advocates, consumers, companies, and regulators to come together to figure out what’s right.

All participants on the CFP panel agree that in the future, data collection is inevitable, and panels like this can help create a balance between privacy and public records. Adler ended his speech reminding viewers that “innovation is a team sport and it requires everyone to help us get through this in a productive way that empowers the customers.” In the meantime, consumers need to be informed and aware of the availability of their personal information, knowing their online activity may forever be accessible on their modern permanent record.
6 comments – Read/add comments
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Delicious

Digg

StumbleUpon

Propeller

Reddit

Magnoliacom

Furl

Facebook

Google

Yahoo

Technorati

read more