The Department of Homeland (in)Security has chosen the the former privacy officer of DoubleClick as its first privacy "czar". DoubleClick is one of the worst offenders with regards to disregard for privacy. Their goal, before getting a huge public black eye at the time, was to link all of your online activity to your personal profile information (which they acquired through the purchase of another company). They were planning to do this through the use of cookies and web bugs that would be used to identify you at any site where you browsed or (of most interest to them) purchased. This earned them an FTC investigation and forced them to change their plans.
Of course, this woman was hired after that fiasco, but I still don't trust anyone who works in the data collection industry to look out for our interests (nor do I expect them to give a damn about the constitution for that matter).
My initial impression:
Hello, fox. Would you like the keys to the henhouse?
But then I'm just a hysterical luddite wanker who wants to get us all killed because I have something to hide. :)
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Posted by Aubrey at April 16, 2003 03:48 PM