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Consumers’ Online Privacy Bill of Rights
By Rosie Perera | February 24, 2012 at 4:35 am
The Obama administration has just unveiled a blueprint for future legislation which it is calling a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” a statement of principles which companies can voluntarily agree to uphold. As a first draft, it is a big step in the right direction. It is high time for such a thing. I will be very interested to see where this takes us. Already some heavyweights have signed on: AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo. Notably missing (so far) is Facebook, which will have to go a long way towards earning back customers’ trust that it takes their privacy seriously. Even Google made waves with its recent changes to link user data across all its web properties (Google Search, Picasa, Gmail, etc.), and people began to doubt whether Google really can be trusted to “do no evil.”
Here are the main points of the Bill of Rights:
1. Individual Control: Consumers have a right to exercise control over what personal data companies collect from them and how they use it.
2. Transparency: Consumers have a right to easily understandable and accessible information about privacy and security practices.
3. Respect for Context: Consumers have a right to expect that companies will collect, use, and disclose personal data in ways that are consistent with the context in which consumers provide the data.
4. Security: Consumers have a right to secure and responsible handling of personal data.
5. Access and Accuracy: Consumers have a right to access and correct personal data in usable formats, in a manner that is appropriate to the sensitivity of the data and the risk of adverse consequences to consumers if the data is inaccurate.
6. Focused Collection: Consumers have a right to reasonable limits on the personal data that companies collect and retain.
7. Accountability: Consumers have a right to have personal data handled by companies with appropriate measures in place to assure they adhere to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.
You can read the full text here, and a hopeful Time analysis of it here.
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