Does the Government need to get involved?
With Intel in charge of your privacy the answer is a definite yes but with an intelligent approach to ecommerce --- in which the consumer owns his digital identity --- the answer is no. The following article shows a split between the advertising community which wants to track you and sell everything about you to anyone and everyone and the consumer. The opportunity for A Digital Me version of ecommerce with the consumer holding his identity in a protected vault is a real opportunity for Novell to show a better way to open up secure ecommerce.
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NetTrends: An Arms Race In Computer Privacy
By Dick Satran
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - On the Internet, nobody knows if you're a dog -- but plenty of people would like you to wear a tag.
As e-commerce becomes the main attraction on the Web, there are a growing number of ways being offered to identify and track users moving from site to site through cyberspace.
The latest was chip giant Intel Corp (Nasdaq:INTC - news)'s. effort to embed serial numbers in all its products, sparking outrage among privacy advocates worried that it could
allow absolute identification of all users on the Web.
Intel's embedded ID is just the latest in a list of technologies -- digital certificates, network profiles, digital signatures, biometric ID's and cookies, to name a few -- all trying to do the
same thing: Find out who you are and what you're doing in cyberspace.
''There is a very voracious information-gathering community on the Web,'' said Deirdre Mulligan of the Center for Democracy and Technology. ''If there's something out there to aid
them in monitoring and linking and measuring traffic, they're going to go after it.''
Many technology companies see the tagging of users as one of the essential building blocks for doing business on the Internet -- helping add to security and accountability to
transactions.
The eagerness of marketers to gather information on users was on plain display last week when a Palo Alto, Calif., company, Free-PC, offered to give free computers to consumers
willing to share details about themselves online and willing to leave their screens open to e-mails and special promotions from the company.
The PC, in this light, becomes a Trojan horse that marketers use to get into consumers homes' and wallets.
The valuable data can more than pay the cost of the personal computer, FreePC claims. After all, advertisers spend $250 billion a year trying to sell things to elusive consumers, and
all of the PCs sold amount to just a fraction of that -- at about $50 billion.
If PCs can explain consumers' buying habits, they might answer the age-old question attributed to a savvy department store mogul: ''I know I spend twice as much as I should on
advertising -- I just don't know which half to get rid of.''
One of the reasons Internet stocks have soared, and the thing that makes so many people excited about e-commerce, is that some see the retailer's ancient riddle finally being solved,
and the Web becoming the intelligent gateway for the $8.3 trillion U.S. market for goods and services.
By following users' movements online, a marketer can send a perfectly targeted pitch to someone seeking information. When a Web surfer looks for information on Bermuda, for
example, a travel agent can offer to sell a low-priced ticket. It's just a click away.
The Intel embedded chip offered a perfect solution -- no messy registrations or e-forms to fill out, its backers said. The chip itself acts as a license plate and a credit card combined.
A recent survey of leading technology companies by CIO (chief information officer) Magazine showed most technology companies favoring Intel's plan. They agreed by a nearly 2-1
ratio that ''it's more important to track customer information than to protect their privacy.''
Intel was convinced that consumers would agree as well. Pat Gelsinger, an Intel vice president heading desktop products, said, ''Most users are going to see this as an advantage.''
But since it made its initial proposal to put tags on its ubiquitous chips, Intel has been about as popular as the neighborhood dog catcher rounding up puppies for the pound. Privacy
groups called for a boycott of Intel products, and the chip maker ended up pulling back on the plan. It now proposes a chip that lets users agree to have a publicly viewed ID
number.
However, the drive toward fuller identification of Web users continues full speed ahead, propelled by the companies that stand to profit and accepted, to some extent, by consumers
who want convenience and security.
Intel's chip stamping is just one approach to the problem. Users can also be tracked via the network they're on, through Internet connections, and at the Web site level. Shoppers'
movements have always been tracked by credit card companies, for security purposes. If your credit card number is used in Afghanistan and Parisippany, N.J., on the same
afternoon, you'll probably get a friendly call.
''As a customer, I might think this is all great,'' said James Rothfuss, a privacy expert at the Lawrence National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. ''But from a privacy point of view, the
question is what do they use all this information for. All this data could provide a pretty good picture of a person's life, if it's put in one place. But how well do sites protect their
customers? How do they use the information they have?''
Technology companies now are vying to show that they can produce the best and most reliable information about people online. Network Solutions Inc. (Nasdaq:NSOL - news), the
official names registrar of the Internet, is valued by investors at $2.5 billion, more for its treasure trove of Internet names than its business model. VeriSign is another Internet start-up
that loses money but gets a massive market value for its digital certificates embedded in the computers of every major site doing commerce on the Web.
Traditional Silicon Valley players, Intel included, are also getting into the ID game. Novell Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL - news) is touting the merits of a ''directory-enabled commerce''
system ''that will bring us to the holy grail of a single sign-on for every user on the network,'' said Vice President Christopher Stone at a recent presentation.
Sun Microsystems President Scott McNealy sent shudders through the privacy community when he reportedly said at a recent product launch. ''You have zero privacy anyway. Get
over it.''
The comment gave new evidence of what David Banisar of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington called a ''privacy arms race'' between tech companies and
privacy advocates. It's an issue that might soon begin to broaden from those special interest groups, as more people are affected.
''This is really not a technical problem, it's a problem that mirrors what's going on in society as a whole,'' said Lance Hoffman of George Washington University's CyberInstitute. ''It's
a balancing problem that the government needs to help sort out. It's not going to be decided by Intel, or Novell, or EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center.). We have to come
to a societal decision about what we allow, or not.''
(The Net Trends column runs weekly. You can reach Dick Satran at dick.satran(at)reuters.com) |
