You are likely all very aware of the extent to which Web users’ activity is tracked today. The myriad of clicks that individuals leave in their digital wake as they go about their rounds on the Internet are analyzed closely by everyone from researchers to marketers. And the sheer impression of ever-present monitors and the data mining and data sharing that occurs behind closed doors naturally draws concern from privacy advocates as well as the average netizen. Nevermind the fact that such information is routinely compromised by large corporations through alarmingly lax storage and maintenance protocols - and sometimes even sold to dishonorable buyers with little or no penalty to any party other than the owners of the identities and profiles stored in said data archives. For some, it just exudes a creeping suspicion that individual safety takes a near-guaranteed backseat to under-the-rug capitalism.
Well, if you happen to be one to reflexively cringe at the thought of having your data held and scrutinized to large degree by the managers of the countless servers currently in operation, you’ve apparently got a friend in New York Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat representing Westchester County, who finds that the level of user tracking done by Web businesses like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many others leaves him feeling very worried for liberties and individual privacy. In fact, Brodsky considers it so much of a concern, says Louise Story of The New York Times, that he’s gone ahead and drafted a bill for consideration by the state legislature in New York’s capital city, Albany, that effectively would “make it a crime - punishable by a fine (yet) to be determined - for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.”
Of course, we all know that most users on the Web (no, not us technorati; regular people) are quite unaware that such tracking has been going on for quite some time and will indeed continue unless strict limits are enforced. And may remain so well into the future. So it isn’t Average Joe or Jane who will raise the red flag on this particular privacy matter. In order for targeters to be “targeted” themselves, for lack of a better word, it will take concrete law to alter current behavior. (more…)