A California ballot initiative aims to limit targeting of advertising based on "sensitive" personal information.
I think it will do some good — but there are ways to game the new
requirement about personal data. Users could tell companies not to
use the sensitive data, if they find which companies to give this
instruction to. But companies can use observed behavior as
approximate proxies for the personal data. Facebook and others can
tell with high probability whether someone is gay, or what per
religion is, by what perse visits and searches for. However, those
proxy data are not, in fact, part of the sensitive personal data.
In addition, this requirement is vulnerable to the manufacture of
consent(*): "to use our service, which everyone believes one cannot live
without, you must consent to our using your sensitive personal data
for advertising."
What we really need is anonymity in searching and paying on the internet.
Senator Sherrod Brown has proposed a strong internet privacy law
that would make some real difference. His proposed law would limit the collection of data.
He has grasped the issue of the manufacturing of consent.
Whether it would fully address the problem depends on details that I
have not seen. It would prohibit selling personal data; would it
prohibit selling the service of selecting people based on their
personal data, which is what Facebook actually does? The California
ballot initiative does that.
He talks of allowing collection of data that is "necessary" for the
service that is offered, but that rule has strong interpretations and weak interpretations.
Nonetheless, Senator Brown has advanced the discussion considerably.
He rejects the supposed imperative to keep nasty businesses going.
* It amuses me no end to repurpose this term, which Chomsky coined for one
nasty practice, to describe another nasty practice.
