The Latest Push for Web Privacy in US is Welcome

The Advocacy group welcomed the recent move by US Govt for web privacy with new laws and new watchdog. Obama administration is going to launch the new law in the forthcoming weeks. The previous govt emphasized on industry based self-regulation.  In the last summer, Facebook streamlined its security setting after criticism from US senators, the European Union and civil liberty groups. Google has also got flak from British govt for collection of user data via its Street View cars.

Although, The Wall Street Journal did not make any special recommendations but it says that the industry didn’t do a good job in terms of self-regulation so far.The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to publish a report on internet privacy by the end of the year. Industry experts suggested a “do not track” like tool so that marketers and others can not track the users online. A task force has also been formed at federal level to implement the recommendations into policy.

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said that the main reason for the While House to move in this issue because of the fact that it finally understands that consumers are getting increasingly frustrated and agencies across Europe are saying to companies ‘your business practices violate our laws’. He continued that the US doesn’t have any strict laws to handle the internet privacy. The present system doesn’t work that well. Things have gone too far due to the fact that company can collect and share the data easily.

“In the US, this patchwork of some laws for medical information and different laws for financial data and a series of FTC rulings on online privacy, and some rules for e-mail, really doesn’t serve anybody very well,” Jim Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology told BBC News.