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Current Affairs, EFF, Privacy

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Commerce Department Should Embrace ‘Do Not Track’

According to a Press Release from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, dated February 1, 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed comments with the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force, in which they urge "the department to embrace the system and support legislation that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to act on Do Not Track."

The EFF argues that:

"Do Not Track will help consumers fight against the largely invisible, poorly understood, and continually escalating surveillance of their online activities. . . . We all know that privacy policies on websites are hard to understand at best, making them unhelpful tools when it comes to making decisions . . . [w]ith a Do Not Track system, businesses will have a clear way to know what each customer expects of them, and force them to disclose practices that are contrary to those expectation."

In the comments submitted to the Internet Policy Task Force, the EFF also strongly supports recent initiatives and movements to reform the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.  Among several other suggested reforms, the EFF urged Commerce to "back changes to ECPA that would restrict communications provider' disclosures of information to third-parties."

 

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The entire Press Release can be found at the link provided above, or here.  Additionally,  the EFF's comments submitted to the Department of Commerce's Internet Policy Task Force can be found at the link provided above, or here.  

 

 

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