Microsoft proposes having the government protect our privacy by imposing DRM to control companies' use of it.

There are just two gaping flaws in this plan. First, the DRM is a gratuitous part of the scheme. If we have regulations on what companies can do with the data, the threat to punish them for violations would be why they obey the regulations. The DRM really changes nothing.

More fundamentally, this would do nothing to protect us from abuse by the government or its agents, which are the most dangerous abuser of personal data because their abuse threatens democracy itself.