Privacy and Transparency: Are They Mutually Exclusive?
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is looking out for you and me again. But this time, I’m a little worried that their appropriately principled position may get in the way of real progress.
Essentially, EFF is worried about the significant presence of third-party technologies being used by the Whitehouse.gov website and their standard practice of collecting personally identifiable information.
Specifically at issue are YouTube.com, Akamai, Inc. and Amazon S3. EFF asserts that by collecting cookies and IP addresses (as is part of their normal course of business), private citizens are being put at risk. The theory is that the government (or some other nefarious organization) could come along and piece together a profile of private citizens and their interaction with government websites.
Alternatively, EFF suggests that the federal government host more of its own content and outsource less.
So, in this effort to create an administration that is as open as possible, the White House is partnering with third parties and creating a (presumably unintentional) privacy risk.
How does the administration need to prioritize the various requirements being presented by its constituency in this case?
Is it reasonable to expect the White House to be open and transparent (online) and also guarantee that no third party collects any personally identifiable data?
If so, do we extend this requirement to a search engine’s collection of personally identifiable data by anyone who clicks a link leading to a government website?
Or do we accept that privacy online is a utopian concept that cannot effectively be guaranteed by anyone, anywhere, and instead focus on legislation that regulates how private information must be protected by companies doing business with the government?
Sound off in the comments below!
Technorati Tags: privacy, product strategy, open government, eff, electronic frontier foundation
