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reports by government and advocacy groups
This
page highlights some of the more significant online
documents about privacy, in particular government reports
and studies by industry/interest groups.
A useful overview of recent US developments is provided
in the online briefing
by the bipartisan Congressional Internet Caucus.
There's a thoughtful discussion of the Canadian
legislation in relation to international developments in a
report
by Colin Bennett, co-editor of Visions of Privacy:
Policy Choices for the Digital Age (Toronto, Uni of
Toronto Press 99).
The Advisory Committee on Online Access & Security
(ACOAS)
of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
recently released its 220 page Privacy Online: Fair
Information Practices in the Electronic Marketplace report
on consumer access to information collected by commercial
websites and the security of that information.
Coming after a spate of privacy breaches by bodies such as
CDNow, DoubleClick, Amazon, and RealNetworks, it reflects
the FTC's 1998 Privacy Online and 1999 Self-Regulation
reports to Congress.
Transcripts from the 1999 FTC workshop
on online profiling are now available.
In the European Union the European Commission's Data
Directive is now in effect, seeking to harmonise
legislation among EU nations and to set a basic standard.
The EU, in contrast to Australia and North America, has
not relied on self-regulation of ISPs and commercial or
other sites: Brussels is moving to ensure compliance with
mandatory EU-wide principles and operational standards.
It was the subject of None of Your Business: World Data
Flows, Electronic Commerce and the European Privacy
Directive (Washington, Brookings 98) by Peter Swire
& Robert Litan.
While overall responses within the EU have been
positive, some critics argue that the Directive and new
Directive-related national legislation is unduly
bureaucratic or used to suppress freedom of speech.
A recent example is Jacob Palme's paper
on Freedom of Speech, the EU Data Protection
Directive & the Swedish Personal Data Act and his
less temperate view
of Swedish regulation of the Web.
The essays by
Mayer-Schoenberger and Bennett in Technology and
Privacy: The New Landscape (Cambridge, MIT Press 97),
edited by Marc Rotenberg & Philip Agre, are of more
value in assessing European developments and their wider
implications.
Apart from the EU Privacy Directive, a significant
document is the OECD Privacy Guidelines.
The OECD produced a report
on Privacy Protection on Global Networks and one on
Implementing the OECD Privacy Guidelines in the
Electronic Environment: Focus on the Internet (Focus).
The report (PDF)
of its 1998 Workshop on Privacy Protection in a Global
Networked Society is of interest.
Economics may be Global but Politics are Local:
Personal Privacy in the Digital Age, a 1999 paper
by Stephen Kobrin and Eric Johnson, offers thoughtful
comments from the Wharton Business School about the
differing US and EU approaches.
The US National Information Infrastructure Agency
produced a White
Paper on Privacy and the National Information
Infrastructure and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
provided Congress with an Internet privacy report
- Self-Regulation & Privacy Online - on 13 July
1999.
The 1998 Industry
Canada and Justice Canada's consultation paper
on The
Protection of Personal Information: Building Canada's
Information Economy & Society is useful as a
background to the C6 legislation noted earlier in this
guide. There's a broader view in the Radio-Television
Commission (CRTC) paper
on Competition
& Culture on the Information Highway.
consumers
Behind the Numbers: Privacy Practices on the Web,
the 27 July 1999 report
from the US Centre for Democracy and Technology (CDT),
found that less than 10% of US sites met the FTC's minimum
standards.
Beyond Concern: Understanding Net
Users' Attitudes About Online Privacy, a study
by Lorrie Cranor, Joseph Reagle & Mark Ackerman
offered a much criticised but more nuanced analysis of US
consumer responses to privacy policies and seals.
A crucial document, like much of the writing from Donna
Hoffman and Tom Novak's eLab,
is their 1997 paper
Information Privacy in the Marketspace: Implications
for the Commercial Use of Anonymity on the Web.
The California Healthcare Foundation recently released
two landmark reports: a detailed study
on the Privacy Policies & Practices of Health Web
Sites and a study of consumer attitudes to privacy on
health web sites. Unsurprisingly, it found significant
reluctance by many US consumers to divulge any information
and substantial reason for concern in data
collection/management practices.
IBM and Harris Research last year released a detailed
multinational study
of consumer attitudes to online data collection and the
handling of information.
The report shows very clearly
that businesses must have an explicit and well-considered
privacy policy and must 'live' that policy if they are to
gain and maintain the confidence of their customers.
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