Privacy Group Wants FTC To Shut Down Gmail... Again

from the give-it-up dept

I think privacy is a very important issue that often is given short-shrift... but I've never been able to understand some of the positions staked out by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), who seems to have decided long ago that, even if people are making a conscious choice, anything that puts their privacy at risk is downright evil and must be stopped. When Google first launched Gmail back in 2004, EPIC went ballistic saying that it needed to be shut down as a privacy violation. Most people responded by getting Gmail accounts as quickly as they could.

Apparently, EPIC isn't giving up this fight, even though five years have gone by and Gmail has become a popular email service for many, many people online. EPIC has now asked the FTC to shut down all Google online applications, from Google Docs to Gmail, claiming that they're unable to "adequately safeguard the confidential info" of users -- and comparing those apps to a faulty car seat for kids (hyperbole, much?).

This all seems designed to get EPIC attention rather than to actually help consumers. The likelihood of the FTC agreeing with EPIC seems slim (which even EPIC seems to admit). People are pretty aware of what risks they're taking on by putting stuff on Google's servers, and Google has a pretty clear track record of doing its best to keep that info private. But most people feel that the risk is slight and the trade-off and value from the services is obviously worth it. Thus, it's not actually a privacy issue at all -- because most people are comfortable with the situation. So, why is EPIC trying to take away such useful services from millions of people who have come to rely on them?

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Is Anonymity Good Or Bad For Wikipedia?

from the depends-on-who-you-ask dept

Last year plenty of attention was paid to the release of Wikiscanner, a tool from Virgil Griffith that connected the IP addresses of Wikipedia edits with the companies from which they came. This resulted in a few PR flare ups as people noticed some questionable editing by biased parties. Griffith has now upgraded Wikiscanner to do even more (and renamed it to Wikiwatcher). While the revelations probably won't be as surprising, it will allow some way of connecting those who may have edited at home to their employers.

However, perhaps an even more interesting discussion is somewhat buried at the end of the Forbes article linked above: the question over whether or not anonymity is a good or bad thing for Wikipedia. The article quotes Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, complaining that Wikipedia needs to do a better job protecting individuals' privacy. Griffith responds that removing anonymity should improve the quality of Wikipedia:

"I would say that if people are anonymous, the quality of their contribution is probably much lower. Wouldn't you want Wikipedia users to be held accountable for what they change?"

This brings up a few interesting questions. Rotenberg's complaint seems misplaced. The fact that your IP address is revealed with each edit is a known fact. Anyone editing Wikipedia should take that into account. That's hardly Wikipedia's problem. But anonymity can also be an important factor in getting content out. And so far, it appears that all of the "scandals" associated with Wikiscanner were related to biased parties changing info in their favor -- which certainly suggests Giffith has a point: catching those who are changing Wikipedia with ulterior motives does seem to improve the reliability of the site.

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The World Doesn't Revolve Around Washington Privacy Groups

from the nutty-approaches dept

A few months back we covered Ask.com's AskEraser feature, which was touted as a way of enhancing user privacy by allowing them to opt out of personalization features that involve collecting personal information about users. We praised Ask for focusing on privacy, but questioned whether the feature was more marketing gimmick than serious privacy enhancement. Still, we apparently weren't nearly as incensed as the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which went so far as to file a complaint with the FTC alleging that the service failed to adequately protect user privacy, because it set a cookie that included a down-to-the-second timestamp that could conceivably be used as a unique identifier. The only problem is that Ask fixed the problem weeks ago, replacing the timestamp-based cookie with a simple "yes" or "no" setting indicating whether the feature was activated. EPIC apparently didn't notice this, and plowed ahead with its complaint to the FTC. Ask.com even says that it "tried to engage in a constructive dialogue with the group last week, and was rebuffed." I found the response of EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg particularly striking. He says the snafu is Ask's fault for not responding promptly to EPIC's threatening letters. And he says that AskEraser is "a nutty approach that does not scale." Rotenberg, in other words, seems to feel entitled to second-guess the details of how companies implement their products. Rotenberg certainly knows more about privacy law than I do, but I highly doubt that "nutty" or non-scalable privacy features are against the law. And I certainly don't think we want to get the FTC involved in second-guessing every detail of how websites are implemented.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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