Facebook, Feds, Close In On Online PrivacyFacebook, Feds, Close In On Online Privacy

On Oct. 23, Donald Kerr, who is second in command as the deputy director of national intelligence, gave a speech at the GEOINT Symposium, sponsored by the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, that seemed calculated to inflame civil-liberties activists and privacy advocates. In it, Kerr basically said "Fuhgeddaboutit" when it comes to protecting your privacy online.In "our interconnected and wireless world, anonymity -- or the appearance of anonymity -- is quickly becoming a thing of the past," Kerr declared. "We need to move beyond the construct that equates anonymity with privacy and focus more on how we can protect essential privacy in this interconnected environment."

That sounds relatively innocuous. But who, you might ask, is Kerr suggesting should be in charge of "protecting essential privacy"? Who do you think?

"Privacy, I would offer, is a system of laws, rules, and customs with an infrastructure of Inspectors General, oversight committees, and privacy boards on which our intelligence community commitment is based and measured."

In other words, Kerr is saying "Trust us!" when it comes to allowing the government to peek into virtually all of your electronic activity and correspondence (which Congress already did anyway, by passing the "Protect America Act" last summer).

He backed up this sales pitch by comparing trustworthy federal employees with those shady characters down at your local service provider: It strikes Mr. Kerr as "anomalous" that, while users may not want the government prying into their personal lives via the Internet, "they were perfectly willing for a green-card holder at an ISP who may or may have not have been an illegal entrant to the United States to handle their data."

Gosh, Captain Kerr, I never thought of it that way! And what about that woman with the funny accent that answers the phone whenever I call my credit card company -- no telling what evildoing she's up to!

On the other hand, you could trust Facebook, which several days after Kerr's speech released its "Facebook Ads" program, essentially a way of tracking users' online activity -- not just within Facebook but on third-party sites as well -- in order to present them with targeted ads. Facebook Ads is based on a technology called Beacon, which allows Web sites to report back to Facebook on your activity, purchases, interests and so on. See this post from Nate Weiner for one user's horrified reaction to the system -- and how to block it.

Facebook stresses that its targeted ad program gives the user choice -- but it's an opt-out system, not opt-in, which is crucial. And as my colleague Thomas Claburn reports, "While Facebook says in its privacy policy that it has taken steps to restrict possible misuse of such information, 'we of course cannot and do not guarantee that all platform developers will abide by such agreements.'"

Not quite reassuring enough for you? Me, neither. "It's baffling that Facebook would be so brazen in launching its privacy-trampling ad scheme with such great fanfare and arrogance," writes Nicholas Carr on his Rough Type blog.

There is, of course, a consumer interest in the sharing of personal data across the Web: targeted ads benefit not only the marketers but the users. (To give one small example: I found out yesterday that I'd missed the 4-pack ski-pass sale at Eldora, my local ski hill. I would love to have gotten a pop-up saying "3 more days to buy your Eldora 4-pack!") And many Web surfers, particularly younger ones, have quite different ideas about privacy and the value of anonymity than, say, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

I personally think it's idiotic to share info of a personal nature on a public Web site (for further evidence check out this dude, who got busted by his boss for claiming he was taking off work for a "family emergency" when, in fact, he was going to a Halloween party dressed as a fairy, complete with tutu, wand, and heavy eye-shadow, as his Facebook party pic revealed). But even I am willing to trade some control of my private info for some personalized experiences and targeted advertising -- as long as I understand clearly the terms of the exchange. (When that new edition of The Collected Works of Oswald Spengler comes out, man, I'm there!)

The backlash, in case you're wondering, already has begun. Reacting to Google's OpenSocial initiative to provide APIs for developers to create applications across multiple social-networking sites, some techno-wags have launched the ClosedPrivate Initiative, about which I can't tell you much because, well, it's closed and it's private.

"One of the guiding principles of ClosedPrivate is secrecy," says the (anonymous, naturally) blogger on the ClosedPrivate site. "No matter what, we won't let you have access to your data, or anyone else's. We promise."

Now there's a privacy statement I think we can all stand behind. Or hide behind.