Re: Draft: Issue-6, What are the underlying concerns?

* John Simpson wrote:
>Contributors to this text:
>John M. Simpson
>Kevin Trilli

Thank you.

>The user experience online involves the exchange of data across servers.

When I load a Wikipedia page, requests would probably go a proxy server
in the Netherlands, which might then contact a server in Florida, which
would be an exchange between servers, but that is not really part of the
user experience, I just happen to know how the Wikimedia Foundation has
organized their networks and would otherwise be oblivious to it.

>[surveys]

(QB21 in the Special Eurobarometer 359 might be a suitable reference to
provide some non-U.S. figures. The results are available in english via
http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_359_en.pdf and see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobarometer for Background information).

>In response to such concerns in 2007 several public interest groups
>including the World Privacy Forum, CDT and EFF, asked the U.S. Federal
>Trade Commission to create a Do Not Track list for online advertising.
>The idea was compared to the popular and successful "Do Not Call" list
>administered by the Commission.  Other groups around the world have
>followed suit like eDAA and Canada, and are in some cases pushing for an
>express consent model (opt-in) vs. opt-out model.

I think at least the "successful" should be removed unless there is some
citation that shows it works about as good as making cold calls illegal.
I looked into this a while ago, and while I could not find good numbers,
I did get the impression that cold calls to numbers on the list occur at
a rate that's about an order of magnitude greater than in Germany where
the practise is outlawed and associated with organized crime (and still
considered a notable problem with hundreds of millions of such calls per
year.) It might be best to simply say it was compared to the list with-
out further adjectives.

>4.	In the EU, the issue of choice takes a higher level position of
>human right in certain countries (e.g., Germany) where it is built into
>the constitution.  In this case, it is argued that all citizens should
>offer express consent prior to allowing any tracking that is not
>absolutely critical to delivering the fundamental function of the
>visited website.

Actually this is part of Article 8 of The Charter of Fundamental Rights
of the European Union and Article 8 of The European Convention on Human
Rights, the former saying, among other things, in the english version
"Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the
basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate
basis laid down by law." The German Basic Law does not address this in
a manner one would expect from the text above, unless you are familiar
with relevant jurisprudence.
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Received on Wednesday, 21 December 2011 23:46:09 UTC