Technology stokes new Web privacy fears

7-14-2008 National:

User profiles are getting more detailed. Some lawmakers are worried but perplexed by how it all works.

Consumers worry about their Internet privacy. Politicians vow to investigate. And two of the nation's biggest tech companies, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., support federal legislation for data collection.

So why isn't much happening?

One reason is that legislators find the subject kind of confusing.

At the end of a two-hour Senate committee hearing Tuesday on Internet advertising and privacy, Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who led the panel, said the affair had chiefly served to emphasize "how little we do understand."

Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) remarked wryly that because of all the talk about "cookies" and other Web terms, he was going to have to "update my dictionary."

And Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) asked a question about Internet connections so muddled that apparently no one understood it.

"I think I'm not entirely sure of what you are suggesting, senator," the witness answered.

"Nor am I," he said.

-This is like a Hitchcock thriller...

The Senate hearing had been called amid fears that the massive volumes of information about users that Internet companies are collecting is violating their privacy.

For years, websites have assembled profiles of users consisting of personal preferences and activities.

But as websites have increasingly been united in vast ad networks, the various profiles maintained by separate sites have combined to create more detailed and far-ranging portraits of users.

Over the last year, moreover, some Internet service providers have begun experimenting with a practice that would offer even more detailed portraits of individuals. The technology, known as "deep packet inspection," allows ISPs to peer into the stream of data coming from a person's Internet line, a practice critics liken to wiretapping.

Assembled before the Senate committee were representatives of Google, Microsoft, Facebook and NebuAd, one of the companies that provide deep packet inspection technology to Internet service providers.

All of them assured the panel that they were doing their best to protect privacy.

-We should believe them?

To pass any kind of law on the subject, Congress is expected to have to wrestle with thorny technical and philosophical questions.

If "personally identifiable information" is to be guarded by the law, what constitutes personally identifiable information? Should a person's numerical Internet address be considered private?

-Maybe Congress should have thought of this before bills on Sex Offender issues..

If people ought to be informed about data-collection practices, what format should the notice take? Websites already issue long, convoluted terms of service agreements that most consumers never read.

And if a company builds a profile of a consumer, should the consumer be allowed to see what's in their file?

But even if such matters can be decided, not everyone thinks a new law covering online privacy is a great idea.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said regulation may be unwarranted because the industry was moving "quickly to try to cut these problems off before they occur." Consumers could refuse to do business with companies that do not adequately protect privacy.

"The private market has a lot of incentives," he said.

As for the online advertising principles proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, DeMint worries that even those voluntary guidelines could stifle free enterprise.

"In some ways, we've got a solution in search of a problem," he said.

Other panel members seemed certain that there may be a problem afoot on the Internet, however.

Noting that he reads his home-state newspapers online, Nelson sounded fearful of the idea that a company could be collecting information about what he reads.

And Dorgan likened the way websites collect information to having someone follow a shopper around at the mall, jotting down what they looked at and bought as they moved from store to store.

"I don't have the foggiest idea who's tracking it, how they're tracking it, how they might use it, whether that company has some scruples," Dorgan said later.

-Who is tracking, well its the Department of Justice, building cases for court, thats who you idiots, you gave them the authority to do so, and apparently without any warrants too...

"Knowledge is important." ..News Source.. by Peter Whoriskey, The Washington Post