Julie Brill is a member of the Federal Trade Commission.
Revelations about the extent to which the National Security Agency (NSA) collects personal information started a robust national debate on how best to balance national security and privacy rights.
Last month, members of the House of Representatives questioned the funding for the government’s data-collection programs, and last week the White House proposed steps to increase the transparency of those programs. Along the way, consumers have gotten a crash course in the price we pay to participate in the online and mobile marketplace: Our most intimate information floats free in cyberspace, ripe for any data miner — government or otherwise — to collect, use, package and sell.
All day long, as we surf the Web, tap at apps or power up our smartphones, we send digital information out into cyberspace.
As we live our wired lives, we constantly add to the veins from which data miners pull pure gold. It took the NSA revelations to make concrete what this exchange means: that firms, governments or individuals, without our knowledge or consent, can amass large amounts of private information about people to use for purposes we don’t expect or understand.
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The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) provides some protections. The law requires that entities that collect information for those making employment, credit, insurance and housing decisions do so in a manner that ensures the information is accurate.
The Federal Trade Commission targets firms that screen potential tenants, credit recipients, employees and insurance purchasers without complying with the law. But in an online world in which companies large and small innovate constantly and — sometimes unknowingly — push legal boundaries, it is difficult to reach all of those who may engage in activities that fall afoul of the FCRA.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/demanding-transparency-from-data-brokers/2013/08/15/00609680-0382-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html
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