Today's Orwell Award goes to the unnamed Internet service providers engaged in the clandestine monitoring of "every click you make." We all know that the government lurks in Islamic chat rooms, is curious about your search history, and who might be borrowing Bomb Making for Dummies from the public library. Now tech savvy "business intelligence" companies are leaping at new opportunities to explore your intimate online details. The Washington Post explains the practice:
Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer's visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as "deep-packet inspection," enables a far wider view -- every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets -- like electronic envelopes -- that the system can access and analyze for content.
Considering how chummy the telecommunications industry has been with the White House these last 7 long years, privacy advocates and conspiracy wing nuts alike have a whole new set of worries: Big Brother isn't just watching you, he hopes to turn a profit on it. Data mining in some form or another has been around forever; the simplicity of mining ISP's, not to mention its profitability, makes the invasion of privacy irresistible to an increasing number of marketing firms and service providers alike.
For all its promise, however, the service providers exploring and testing such services have largely kept quiet -- "for fear of customer revolt," according to one executive involved.
It is only through the companies that design the data collection systems -- companies such as NebuAd, Phorm and Front Porch -- that it is possible to gauge the technology's spread. Front Porch collects detailed Web-use data from more than 100,000 U.S. customers through their service providers, Maxson said. NebuAd has agreements with providers covering 10 percent of U.S. broadband customers, chief executive Bob Dykes said.
Madison Avenue isn't allowed to tap your phone or open your mail to make a sales pitch easier. Congress must take action to secure consumer privacy from the emerging potential of abuse made possible by the Digital Age. Before that can happen we need elected officials able to grasp contemporary threats to privacy. Over the course of the next administration's control of Washington there will be three open slots on the FTC. It is critical that the next president appoint commissioners that take privacy and consumer protection seriously.