Month: February 2012

Ann Cavoukian describes data linkage and her thought about a wrongly decided Canadian court case.

Maybe I should call Target back and see if they want to hire me for their privacy team.

More on Target from Kashmir Hill here.

This article about Path really highlights a significant problem. Namely, the attitude among technology companies towards privacy. I’ve previously written about how Google doesn’t get it but it appears the attitude runs much farther. You really have to have somebody in the company “thinking Privacy.” It’s not just about regulatory compliance and making sure one’s privacy policy comports with actual practice, you have to examine “how is the market going to react” if they knew exactly what was going on. In law school ethics class, one of my professors used to tout the “what would my mother say” if I told her what I’d done. Companies need a privacy person acting as their internal brain sometimes.

One of the problems with the personal data lockers concept is that fails to address the transfer-ability of data. This is the same problem that DRM faces. It tries to solve a problem by making something harder. In the case of DRM, it tries to make it harder to make copies or transfer data. What’s the result? Hackers and crackers come around to eliminate the self imposed technological barrier. Some thing with Personal Data Lockers, in my opinion. I’m not saying it won’t work in certain circumstances and to certain degrees but this solution is just an anti-productivity solution. I’ll try to write more about this in the future.