CREWS: Online marketing myopia

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COMMENTARY:

We are in the middle of an advertising revolution, driven by technology. Congress is up in arms over "behavioral advertising" online by companies like Google.

Targeted advertising helps fuel today's flood of information, frictionless e-commerce, and the global blogger soapbox - so much so that it has become cliche to call the Internet one of the most important wealth-creating and democratizing technologies ever known.

Unfortunately, every new information technology advance stokes privacy fears - and marketing that tracks our online comings and goings is no different.

Behavioral advertising employs heretofore unexploited "tracking" capabilities of the Internet - which reminds us that there is more to the Internet than just the Web at any given juncture, and it's only 2008.

The cries have become familiar. Is my data personally identifiable? Can it become so? Will my identity be stolen? And if a breach occurs, who will be punished?

Remember how angry we would get at receiving ads that were untargeted spam? Today, the ads are relevant, but we are still not satisfied.

Privacy is not a "thing" to legislate; it is a relationship expressed in countless ways. User preferences preclude one-size-fits-all privacy policy. Online, some hide behind digital gated communities; others parade before personal Webcams.

Trying to legislate would be exceedingly complex, as any law would need to contend with myriad questions. If online privacy is regulated, what about offline? Should the standard be opt-in or opt-out? Who defines "behavioral," or "sensitive"? Should the federal government preempt state laws? What about non-commercial information collection?

Many companies, of their own accord, already follow principles much like the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) proposed opt-in for sensitive information, even when the information is not personally identifiable.