A pal in California drew my attention to a news report and an editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s dated 1st June, 2011.
Silicon Valley’s local newspaper
The Chronicle is one of Silicon Valley’s key local papers. I’m not a regular reader but I have always understood that, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Chronicle is reasonably clued up on cyber stuff and not prone to the hysteria which can affect some parts of the media whenever anything to do with the internet hoves into view.
On the day in question the Chronicle carried a report and an editorial on the fate of the Internet Privacy Bill. It had just been presented a second time in the State Legislature by Senator Ellen Corbett, a Democrat.
Senator Corbett’s Bill essentially envisaged social networking sites being required to create strong default privacy settings for new users. These would cover such things as current location, home address, telephone number, financial accounts and mother’s maiden name. Of course the user could later liberalise these settings if they chose to but this is how things would be at the off.
96 hour deadline
The Bill also anticipated sites being required to remove all personally identifiable information within 96 hours of a request from a user, or a parent in the case of someone who is under the age of 18.
Rather predictably leading industry players, through the Internet Alliance, opposed the measure. Seemingly one of the arguments they advanced in relation to the 96 hours proposal was that
Social networks do not currently have the technology to delete a customer’s information from the entire site.
I think I know what the Alliance was trying to say but this was a very poor way of expressing it. Once information is out on the internet you never know where it will end up. It is foolish to pretend you can ever be sure to get it all back, much less make an individual site responsible for so doing.
However, it was precisely because that is the case the leader in the Chronicle argued the clause was so necessary i.e. if these sensitive items were private by default it would reduce the possibility of the information they contained escaping into the void. They could only be released with the individual’s express knowledge and consent. This would require at least a minimal degree of thought and active engagement.
Gone but not forgotten
The Bill was beaten by five votes, with eight Senators absent. No doubt those eight will be called to explain their disappearance. The Bill may yet appear again in another form.
Moreover, lest we forget, under the US Federal System there is many a slip ‘twixt State Legislature and the US Supreme Court. Getting something ostensibly passed into law in a single state does not mean it will necessarily ever be put into effect. Legal challenges are the norm not the exception in this area.
If you can’t win in the West
The point, though, is obvious. The debate in the internet’s home state is really not so very different from the debate in many other parts of the world.
If a vote of that kind can get so close in California I wonder if any internet company really believes it can hold back the tide for very much longer anywhere else on the planet?
Desiderata 