White House to Push Privacy Bill

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the current administration is planning to ask Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights" to protect the public from unauthorized and intrusive data gathering.

The administration's plan to push for legislation reflects a shifting attitude by the government, which for more than a decade favored a hands-off approach to the Internet. Officials have said the increasing intrusiveness of online tracking has forced them to reassess that approach.
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Good.

I have thought this was necessary for some time.

Let's just hope that industry lobbyists don't get it watered down to the point of uselessness like they do with every other law proposed to protect the public... :rolleyes:
 
The group's proposal bucks the industry's major trade groups, which have said their members don't know how to accommodate browser do-not-track requests...
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lol
 
my question would be how far does the government go here all in the name of protecting us?

im always leery of these types of actions, id much rather see some independent group push for privacy reforms instead of laws being passed.

this could have far reaching affects since the idea of tracking you on the internet is used by many companies, especially the big ones like Google, MS, etc.
 
trooper11 said:
im always leery of these types of actions, id much rather see some independent group push for privacy reforms instead of laws being passed.
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Independent industry groups always fail at doing anything meaningful as their interests are not aligned with regulating themselves.

Take the age ratings for films and TV for instance.

Whoever decided that Jersey shore is appropriate for 13 year olds just needs to be shot in the face.

You can never ever trust a for profit institution or any industry groups of for profit institutions to do the right thing. They will always do whats best for their wallet.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm a huge supporter of capitalism and free markets as much as possible, as they are much more efficient at getting things done due mostly to personal incentives. Governments are horrible and inefficient. But when an industry is found to need some sort of reigning in or regulation, you can never trust that industry to do it themselves.

They will always come up with something watery and ineffective without any teeth that allows them to do pretty much whatever they want without consequences that just parades as a control.

Self regulation is the biggest farce ever.

So lets say - against all odds - the big players, Google, Microsoft, Facebook get together and come up with rules for themselves to follow regarding privacy and data collection that are more than just a facade and actually change the way they do business (highly unlikely). Who's to stop the small startup from disregarding these rules and becoming the next large data collector down the road? Since they are self-regulations they are completely voluntary and no one can force them to do anything.

Any limits on industry activity needs to be enforced and have teeth. No free enterprising organization is voluntarily going to control themselves if it causes them to lose even a slightest amount of money. The government is the ONLY player that can be trusted with this task.

Industry self regulations are a joke.
 
The group's proposal bucks the industry's major trade groups, which have said their members don't know how to accommodate browser do-not-track requests...
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Biggest lie I've heard in a while.

do they seriously think I'm going to believe that they've figured out how to use every little bit of information available frm your browsing session taht they can to profile you, but they somehow haven't figgured out the "off" button?

Give me a break, lol!
 
Zarathustra[H];1036983591 said:
Any limits on industry activity needs to be enforced and have teeth. No free enterprising organization is voluntarily going to control themselves if it causes them to lose even a slightest amount of money. The government is the ONLY player that can be trusted with this task.

Industry self regulations are a joke.
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Well in a better world, it would be the consumer that could drive the industry to make changes it wants to see by not using its products, but if we cant rely on that, then we often rely on the government for it, which isnt really meant to become deeply intertwined with the private sector.

the problem is that while you might be right about the government being equipped for regulation, to say that they are just far and away more trustworthy with regulation than the private sector is laughable. How many times have we seen regulations by the government not enforced, essentailly having no teeth as you say about self regulations, and worse, the politicians will often get in bed with the highest bidder and shape regulations to be favorable to one group over another.

the fact is that everyone, government or private, is susceptible to bad judgement, susceptible to bribes, etc. We are suppose to keep both in check. Government officials get voted out and Private businesses lose customers. the problem is that neither happens all the time and so you see issues like this crop up. There are bad apples that seek nothing but money and power in both the public and private sectors, it just comes down to which disgusts you the least lol


so yeah, until we as consumers and voters really stand up to the issues we face, we will be stuck waiting for government to regulate everything. all i know is that government has a way of taking simple ideas and making them far too complicated and bloated with ideas/powers that had nothing to do with the intention of the proposal.
 
trooper11 said:
id much rather see some independent group push for privacy reforms instead of laws being passed.
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Well either way the decisions will be bought buy the highest bidder... just a hunch anyways :rolleyes:

To me, some sort of laws would be good. I mean, you can't just walk up to a person's home, take pictures of their insides, then cram special letters in their mailboxes with scams they might fall for... or at least, you shouldn't be able to IMO
 
Yes, in a world with no death, unicorns, and fairies, free market and independent groups would be ideal.

However, in this world, I would rather have an organization that has some oversight and accountability (the government) pass these laws than an organization with no oversight or accountability (independent group).
 
Dreaz said:
Yes, in a world with no death, unicorns, and fairies, free market and independent groups would be ideal.

However, in this world, I would rather have an organization that has some oversight and accountability (the government) pass these laws than an organization with no oversight or accountability (independent group).
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then the question is exactly how much oversight the government should have, or do we just let them have free reign to do whatever they want?

if we accept the fact that we as consumers can do nothing about this, then we have to decide how much control we give to the government to protect us. thats the key becuase alot of these 'well intentioned' laws sneak in things we wouldnt otherwise agree with. i hesitate to let politicians decide all the details for us.
 
You don't have to give or let the government anything. The government is there to serve the people, and to make sure that it does, you can participate in your government. Too often, people just vote every four years, do nothing else, and then complain when politicians don't wave a magic wand and solve all of the problems. People need to actively participate and instead of asking politicians to do things, tell them what they're going to do, else they just serve the highest bidders.
 
OK good. Now that they took care of all the other important shit, this is a good thing to work on now.
 
Lord Nassirbannipal said:
You don't have to give or let the government anything. The government is there to serve the people, and to make sure that it does, you can participate in your government. Too often, people just vote every four years, do nothing else, and then complain when politicians don't wave a magic wand and solve all of the problems. People need to actively participate and instead of asking politicians to do things, tell them what they're going to do, else they just serve the highest bidders.
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Interestingly enough, I didn't realize that the House of Representatives increased in size every time there was a Census, in order to have more Representatives for more people. They ended that practice around 1900-1910 I believe, so it has been fixed at 435 Reps ever since.

So basically each Rep covers about 700k people. How can 1 person accurately represent so many people? It used to be around 1/10th of that amount, 1 rep for about 70,000 people or so, which I believe would allow for less "big-money" in government, because each Rep would have more time to spend getting to know what his constituents actually want, rather than needing huge sums of money to reach out to them, which requires them to pander to interest groups to get that money.

So my .02, incredibly OT, is make the House of Reps more proportional to the population and adjust it every Census again. It might also break the 2 party system, with thousands of reps running around it would be too hard to enforce discipline and we might see a better variety of ideas instead of our false dichtomy of only 2 sides to any issue.
 
Hah, this was my favorite part:

"We want to work with all the browser companies to see if this is technically feasible."
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Its been technically feasible for years, so either this guy is not well informed, or leaning away from this.

I'm glad that the suggestion even made it to Congress, but I'm not going to be surprised if this doesn't pass.
 
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