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[RRE]DoubleClick privacy questions
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[Faced with possible action by the FTC in response to complaints by
privacy activists (in addition to the ones I've already mentioned on
RRE, see
Internet electronic commerce is giving rise to a new privacy disaster
about once a week. Usually these sorts of panics are overblown, but
the weird thing here is that most people are too complacent. "It's a
one-time thing. It just happens a lot." The vast majority of people,
including many in the computer industry, woke up to the Internet very
recently; they take it as a given, and they have no way of imagining
how it could be any different. Maybe you need to have been doing this
stuff for decades to realize what a pile of junk it all is. It is not
a superficial problem, and the necessary structural solutions won't
happen unless a significant amount of force is applied. To this end,
the FTC should be made responsible for enforcing the Fair Information
Practices
The great danger is that the applications architecture we have right now will freeze in place due to well-known standards dynamics. We can't blame the people who designed the stuff; they assumed that they were sketching a first rough draft, not setting something in stone for all time. If we can't change those first rough drafts once they become widely used, then the ideological image of the Internet as a roiling cauldron of endless structural change is (like so much of the received wisdom in this area) the opposite of the truth. And in that case, we need to adopt a more deliberative method for adopting the standards that increasingly govern our lives.
One structural problem is that the client-server architecture of the Web is misconceived. The client-server concept arose in contexts such as proprietary airline reservations systems in which the institutional relationship between client and server is fixed and well-understood. In such an environment, it makes sense for the technological boundary between client and server to be invisible to the user: the moral and legal boundary is provided by the well-understood contract. As the client-server model moved onto public networks such as the Internet, however, the underlying assumption of a fixed and well-understood institutional relationship between client and server was undermined. A Web client transacts business with an unbounded variety of servers, and the institutional relationship between them -- the rules that govern privacy and a hundred other things -- are no longer fixed or well-understood. Yet the boundary between client and server is still invisible. It will simply not be possible to solve privacy problems in Web-based electronic commerce until this profound architectural and user-interface problem is repaired, and that will require substantial revisions to the most basic conception of the Web.
We can begin to imagine what this would look like: take the tools that sophisticated security experts like Richard Smith use to watch packets moving into and out of your personal computer, make those tools an integral part of the operating system, and incorporate user- friendly interfaces for those tools into the architecture of the Web browser. Those stupid pop-up windows that say "you've gotten a cookie XQW27RTOX990876GHRX91 from tormentor666.redzone.doubleclick.com; do you want to accept it?" are a band-aid version of this. They are not built into the operating system, they are annoying, and they are not intelligible to the user. They're designed to make you turn them off. We can do an awful lot better, but first we have to think in moral and legal terms about what personal boundaries are, and the respective roles of technology, policy, markets, consumer education, and community norms in supporting them.
Last point. If you're not grossed out enough by Internet privacy and
security already, see
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Press Releases
STATEMENT FROM KEVIN O'CONNOR, CEO OF DOUBLECLICK
NEW YORK, March 2, 2000 - "Over the past few weeks, DoubleClick (Nasdaq: DCLK) has been at the center of the Internet privacy controversy. During this time, we have met and listened to hundreds of consumers, privacy advocates, customers, government officials and industry leaders about these issues. The overwhelming point of contention has been under what circumstances names can be associated with anonymous user activity across Web sites."
"It is clear from these discussions that I made a mistake by planning to merge names with anonymous user activity across Web sites in the absence of government and industry privacy standards."
"Let me be clear: DoubleClick has not implemented this plan, and has never associated names, or any other personally identifiable information, with anonymous user activity across Web sites."
"We commit today, that until there is agreement between government and industry on privacy standards, we will not link personally identifiable information to anonymous user activity across Web sites."
"This action does not affect our core business activity. It means we are going to await clear industry standards before we decide the future direction of a number of new products. We will continue to expand our successful media, technology, e-mail and offline data businesses. We will also continue to abide by common industry practices in building anonymous profiles for ad targeting."
"Since founding DoubleClick only 4 years ago, our company has grown to 1,800 employees with more than 7,000 customers worldwide. We are helping thousands of companies become successful in our new economy. I'm proud of DoubleClick's leadership as an innovator in improving the value of Internet advertising and keeping the Internet free for consumers. Taking risks, inventing new products and services, and correcting mistakes is a sign of responsible leadership."
"Creating industry policies involving something so incredibly important to our global economy and individuals is not something to be taken lightly. We all agree on the goals: keep the Internet free while protecting consumer privacy. It is now time for industry, consumers and government to develop a clear set of guidelines that help create a healthy, free Internet while protecting the privacy of all consumers."
About DoubleClick Inc. DoubleClick Inc. (www.doubleclick.net) is a leading provider of comprehensive global Internet advertising solutions for marketers and Web publishers. Combining technology, media and data expertise, DoubleClick centralizes planning, execution, control, tracking and reporting for online media campaigns. DoubleClick Inc. has Global headquarters in New York City and maintains over 30 offices around the world. ```
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