Don’t
like what a website has done with your personal information? Don’t understand
its privacy policies? A new privacy
complaint site is
now open for business–created by an Internet freedom and privacy advocacy
group in Washington, D.C. called the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).
The Take Back Your Privacy site offers simple ways to file complaints.
Complaints
can be shared with your social network via sites like Twitter and Facebook, and
also forwarded to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If enough complaints
surface, it’s possible that the FTC will launch an investigation into whether a
website is violate existing laws.
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The
larger point is to create a cudgel to get Congress interested in enacting comprehensive
Internet privacy legislation. CDT has already put out a pretty good guide to online privacy
problems, explaining existing and often narrowly-written patchwork of court
rulings and laws, most of them falling hopelessly behind rapid technological
advances.
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“In
the past ten years, the ability of Internet companies to collect and aggregate
information has increased dramatically,” says Leslie Harris, the group’s
president. But while some states have taken action, Congress has not. “We
see next year as the first time in a decade that we will have serious debate in
Congress on whether we will have comprehensive privacy laws.”
Among
other things, says Harris, “we ought to have a tool that takes you out of
online tracking; with one click, you delete all tracking devices that have been
put on your computer.” Users should also have the power to force Internet
companies to delete personal data, such as search requests, after the passage
of a reasonable period of time, she adds.
