I Swear Washington is Listening to the Professor

After my rants on privacy - it seems that a "Do not call" list is likely to be applied to the web.

The FTC prodded by the excesses of the Rapleaf too as used by Facebook and others wants to create an opt out list. This opt out list will be in the form of a do not call list.

According to the NY Times the FTC : "the government’s top consumer protection agency on Wednesday advocated a plan that would let consumers choose whether they want their Internet browsing and buying habits monitored. "

Unfortunately this does not go far enough for me. In my view there are 3 stages to the tracking process.

Acquisition of the data, Monitoring the data and then using the data. The assumption is that if you restrict the monitoring of the data then you can prevent the manipulation. However while that is obvious - I believe that there should be no acquisition of any data to prevent the use obliquely of the data and meta data.

We shall see....

Cheers