ACLU Launches MUCH NEEDED DotRights Campaign

ACLU Launches MUCH NEEDED DotRights Campaign

My friends at the ACLU, with special thanks to Nicole Ozer, the Norther California branch Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Director, have launched an exciting, and what I consider to be an incredibly important campaign called "DotRights".

The campaign was launched yesterday with an ENORMOUS task in front of it: both educating the public about our right to control our data on the Internet and throughout our evolving cyberspace reality, as well as the concrete steps we need to take to protect our privacy rights. And as the campaign notes, some fairly broad rights were granted - though its intent is rarely followed - to each and every one of us by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.

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For anyone that ever reads this blog you probably already are aware of the myriad of ways in which companies and government agencies take advantage of both a lax legal landscape that allows massive amounts of our personal data to be collected and sold simply based on our browsing habits...and the lack of consumer understanding of this growing business practice.

Think behavioral marketing, think Google books, think Facebook, think the coming smart grid, think locational tracking, think government surveillance, and so on, and so forth. The list is becoming infinitely long as today's information economy grows and evolves...which is precisely the point of the ACLU'S DotsRights effort.

Check out this particularly useful tool on the site...as it takes you through step by step how your data can be used for purposes other than what you want it to be...

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http://consumercal.blogspot.com/2009/11/aclu-launches-much-needed-dotrig...