Google moves to exempt itself from “Do Not Track” regulations

  A few years ago the Federal Trade Commission announced its “Do Not Track” plan and this was designed to protect people’s online privacy rights by allowing people to opt out of “cookies” which allow third parties to track a person’s internet usage. However the regulations have never been finalized.

  Here is the back story from the New York Times:

FOUR years ago, the Federal Trade Commission announced, with fanfare, a plan to let American consumers decide whether to let companies track their online browsing and buying habits. The plan would let users opt out of the collection of data about their habits through a setting in their web browsers, without having to decide on a site-by-site basis.

The idea, known as “Do Not Track,” and modeled on the popular “Do Not Call” rule that protects consumers from unwanted telemarketing calls, is simple. But the details are anything but.

Although many digital advertising companies agreed to the idea in principle, the debate over the definition, scope and application of “Do Not Track” has been raging for several years.

  The FCC decided to let an industry group carve out the regulations and according to the same article the proposed regulations would render “Do Not Track” meaningless. Here is more:

Now, finally, an industry working group is expected to propose detailed rules governing how the privacy switch should work. The group includes experts but is dominated by Internet giants like Adobe, Apple, Facebook, Google and Yahoo. It is poised to recommend a carve-out that would effectively free them from honoring “Do Not Track” requests.

If regulators go along, the rules would allow the largest Internet giants to continue scooping up data about users on their own sites and on other sites that include their plug-ins, such as Facebook’s “Like” button or an embedded YouTube video. This giant loophole would make “Do Not Track” meaningless.

  Regular readers of America’s Watchtower know my position on un-elected government agencies creating what amounts to law instead of letting the Congress pass legislation (and even this New York Times article admits this should have been left up to the Congress) and in this case the FTC announced it was going to protect the people and their online privacy only to hand over the responsibility of writing the regulations to the very entities they are supposedly trying to protect us from.

  And now we see what the outcome is likely to be…

  Some would probably argue that this is proof the FTC should be more involved instead of letting the corporations write the regulations, but I would argue that if the government is going to get involved it should be debated in the Congress.

  Although I doubt anything would change if the Congress did get involved; our politicians are all bought and paid for. Another example of the government making it look as though they are acting on the best interests of the people while actually doing nothing.

  First the Congress passes the responsibility onto the FTC, then the FTC passes the responsibility onto the internet giants and in the end nothing changes while they create the illusion that they did something.

  Of course Google is in bed with the Democrats so it looks as though we might be seeing the Hegelian Dialectic on full display once again: take advantage of a crisis, create the opposition, control both sides of the argument, and implement the predetermined “solution”  which turns out to be no solution at all because the government, albeit for different reasons, has a vested interest in online tracking.

The fix is in…