Reading “The Filter Bubble” made me realize how overexposed we are when we are looking at a certain website and how our information can be so easily obtained by third parties. I came across an interesting article, talking about a new privacy protection law President Obama plans to pitch to Congress. He’s urged Congress to consider privacy protections when debating cybersecurity legislation. What caught my eye was that he was recruiting the help of Twitter legal director Nicole Wong, to join the administration as a top privacy advisor. That news has advocates examining Wong’s record, which includes a stint at Google. Wong has been working at Twitter for less than seven months. She moved there from Google, where she worked with that company’s engineers to review new products for copyright and privacy considerations. I think this is a great recruit to help bring a law that is very much needed and that many American are probably not aware about. Privacy is something that we should all be entitled to even in the world wide web. Thoughts?
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/77986.html
I am very happy to learn that something is being done about privacy protection on the internet. A sufficient amount of time has passed since the internet was first established and I don’t believe that much has been done to protect individuals on the internet. What troubles me is that Ms. Wong is working for a company that we are trying to protect individuals from. This may very well influence how the privacy law is phrased and maybe in favor of the companies rather than the individuals. Everyone is selfish and out trying to better themselves, especially in business where profits are the goal. This is not an optimistic opinion but it is something to worry about. However, having some privacy laws are still better than none so I am very pleased with this initial start to protect Americans on the internet.
I’m really glad that the government finally decides to do something about online privacy issues. I also think that online privacy should be treated as offline privacy. And since this online privacy issue is more likely problems between individuals versus big companies, there are very limited things we can do as individuals even though it’s concerning our personal information. I think government regulation can work more effectively than individuals’ actions. Also it is really great that Obama recruited Wong who actually worked for big companies. I expect that he knows personalization algorithms of big companies so that he can carefully apply them when he works with privacy issues.
I think that the government should focus a little bit more on other aspects of cyber-security that affect the US as a whole. I am referring to government-backed hackers from China that, since 2006, have stolen data from at least 141 countries across 20 industries. This is a major issue being that the US economy is driven by technology, especially in the financial markets.