can corporations be trusted to self-regulate?

Craig Cummings — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:57:10 +0000

Back in December, Stephanie Clifford from the New York Times reported on an FTC roundtable on privacy and technology. Predictably, the big corporations like Google and Microsoft and Wal-Mart expressed their concerns about government regulation gumming up the works and their preference for self-regulation. But can they really be trusted? For that matter, could the FTC be trusted to regulate them? According to David Kravets at Wired, a Federal Judge recently dismissed the AT&T/NSA spying case stating, “A citizen may not gain standing by claiming a right to have the government follow the law.”

How can we trust either of them, the corporations or the government? Does the government propose to regulate how corporations can use our private data while simultaneously spying on every bit of information we transmit online and listening into our phone calls? I suppose one could argue this might be better than no regulation at all, but it doesn’t make me feel any more secure about my online privacy.

tech musings

can corporations be trusted to self-regulate?