May 2011

[Commentary] How many times have you changed your privacy settings on a social-networking site? If you've lost track, you're not alone. Nor are you alone in your nagging fear that your private information, or that of your child, is lurking out there despite your best efforts - because it very well may be.

Social-networking sites routinely "update" their privacy settings, making it difficult for users to keep track of their own personal information. That's good business for them - their revenue depends on giving advertisers access to as much user information as possible - but it's bad for those of us who care about privacy. No one should be confused about the security of their own personal information. It's a safety issue as well - if businesses have easy access to where you live and how to contact you, so do identity thieves and stalkers. A bill in the Legislature, SB242 by state Sen. Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro, would establish privacy guidelines for social-networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Match.com. Sites would have to set defaults to private so that users themselves could choose which information to make public. It would also allow users to establish their privacy settings when they register to join sites, rather than after they have set up an account and profile. Finally, it would require sites to remove personally identifying information within 48 hours of a user request - or a parent's request, if the user is under the age of 18. As social-networking sites grow and develop in importance, their responsibilities grow as well. And if they don't provide users with the privacy that they need, then government officials must step in.

What began as seamy gossip about an affair between a famous British soccer player and a reality TV star has quickly become another test over how far the rights to privacy and free speech extend online, where social media operate in countries with vastly different laws.

The soccer player has been granted a so-called super-injunction, a stringent and controversial British legal measure that prevents media outlets from identifying him, reporting on the story or even from revealing the existence of the court order itself. But tens of thousands of Internet users have flouted the injunction by revealing his name on Twitter, Facebook and online soccer forums, sites that blur the definition of the press and are virtually impossible to police. Last week, amid growing outrage in Britain over the use of super-injunctions, the athlete obtained a court order in British High Court demanding that Twitter reveal the identities of the anonymous users who had posted the messages. A Twitter spokesman, Matt Graves, said the company could not comment on the court order or how it planned to respond. Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University, said, “It’s really going to the core of Twitter’s service and trying to balance the speech of its users and the fact that countries have different laws and norms about speech.” And while a debate centering on an athlete’s love life might not seem to be the most pressing example of free speech online, there are broader and more urgent implications, analysts said.

While touting the online economy's benefits, French President Nicolas Sarkozy's government in recent years has moved to protect France's music and publishing companies from online rivals, tax online advertisers and punish online intellectual-property thieves. Now, with an election looming next year, President Sarkozy is looking to build bridges to the online community and take the question of Internet governance to an international level.

On May 24 and 25, President Sarkozy will host executives from large Internet, telecommunications and media companies at a conference to discuss how governments can boost growth of the online economy while simultaneously regulating it. Those scheduled to attend, including Facebook Inc. founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt and Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, are expected to weigh issues ranging from taxation to intellectual-property protection. The conclusions of the conference, which has been dubbed the e-G8, will be presented later in the week to heads of government at the summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in Deauville, France.

Just last month we were writing about how privacy is seen as a bipartisan issue in Washington and an area this Congress may take action. Well, maybe not so much. Yes, there's lots of talk -- and SOME action (bills introduced, hearings held) -- but the prospects for a major piece of legislation becoming law seem dimmer and dimmer.

On May 19, Politico's Tony Romm gave readers a peak behind the curtain, exposing some Congressional turf wars. You see, although there may be support among both Democrats and Republicans in the House and the Senate, there's still lots of politics to sort through. Which Congressional committee will be the primary mover for a bill? And which of many, many proposals will be the legislation that moves through Congress?

Romm notes the current tension between Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and the Senate Judiciary Committee headed by Patrick Leahy (D-VT). John Eggerton first raised the issue in Multichannel News back in March. Then, Commerce Committee leadership wrote Chairman Leahy saying his newly-created Privacy, Technology & Law Subcommittee appeared to exceed judiciary's scope and overlaps with legislative matters "squarely within the jurisdiction of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee." Now, in the wake of a May 10 mobile privacy hearing held by the Judiciary Committee's new subcommittee, Chairman Rockefeller 1) released his own online-tracking bill and 2) had his Committee's Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee hold a hearing on mobile privacy.