Category: health privacy

Google’s Larry Page says, reports the BBC, the less Google can hold data the “more likely we all are to die”

At a Google-sponsored UK meeting called European Zeitgeist 2009, Google-co-founder Larry Page said that deleting user data by the six-month maximum period recommended by the EU privacy expert Article 29 Working Party could harm the public. According to a BBC report:  The European Commission wants data ditched after six months but Mr Page said there were benefits to users.  “More dialogue is needed [with regulators],” he [Mr. Page] told UK journalists at a Google event in Hertfordshire.  He said Google’s ability to plot and predict potential pandemics would not be possible if the firm had to delete search data after six months…Mr Page said deleting search data after six months was “in direct conflict” with being able to map pandemics…Mr Page said the less data companies like Google were able to hold the “more likely we all are to die”.  The European Commission has argued that holding on to search data runs the risk of third parties being able to build profiles of individuals even when some identifying information is deleted.

There is clearly a critical role for data in our society to be analyzed for many reasons–especially public health.  But for Mr. Page to not acknowledge how Google’s businesses are also tied into such data collection and analysis is unfortunate.  It underscores how Google’s top managers have failed to effectively recognize their own role in diminishing individual privacy around the world.  Nor should it go unmentioned that the products they sell on their own advertising platforms may also threaten or challenge the public health–including contributing to the global obesity crisis.

AT&T, Time Warner, Microsoft and Facebook Join New Business Group with Ties to Obama Administration

In the age of social media marketing, what may lobbying look like when the Lincoln Bedroom meets Web 2.0?  This new “progressive” business group will also have to address the special interest agendas of its members, including online marketing and data collection.

excerpt via PR Week about the launch of Business Forward:  The group’s wide-ranging roster includes AT&T, Facebook, Hilton, IBM, Microsoft, Pfizer, and Time Warner and was founded by Democratic strategists… The goal for Business Forward is to provide consistent support for President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress.

National Journal reports that: Rather than lobbying, Business Forward’s initial aim will be hosting events around the country to focus on maximizing funds in the $787 billion economic stimulus package…It will be led by political operative Jim Doyle; former Viacom lobbyist David Sutphen, whose sister is Obama’s deputy chief of staff; former Obama media consultant Erik Smith; former Obama campaign staffer Julie Andreeff Jensen; and Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America. Business Forward’s founding members will pay up to $75,000 per year for a membership…

In a letter in Politico, Mr. Doyle explains that “We plan to spend our time encouraging business leaders to discuss how America can make the most of clean energy investments in our current budget, reduce hospital costs through better health care information technology and reform schools so that today’s students are better prepared for tomorrow’s jobs.”

UK Online Ad Lobby Group: “behavioural targeting is going to be the future of the internet.” [Annals of Behavioral Targeting]

The debate over behavioural targeting, profiling and interactive advertising is heating up in the European Union.  We just spoke at a EU event on the topic.  More later on that meeting (which featured Google, Microsoft, Nokia and others, all wearing their Brussels best).  Google and others pointed to a new code on behavioural targeting created by the UK’s Interactive Ad Bureau, which they suggest is a model (and is designed to foreclose on real privacy safeguards).  I will be writing about this code in the next post.  But here’s what the chairman of the IAB UK, Richard Eyre, said about protecting privacy online and the Internet’s future [via Brand Republic.  March 31, 2009]. Excerpts:

Richard Eyre, chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau, has said he accepts the European Union’s decision to investigate behavioural targeting as “logical” but hopes that the current self-regulatory process “will satisfy everyone”.

Eyre was responding to the EU’s decision to investigate behavioural targeting by online advertisers, in a move that could result in legislation that overrides the code recently introduced by the IAB with the support of Ofcom and search giants Google and Microsoft…Eyre said that he understood that the EU had to have a point of view on the issue because behavioural targeting is a new tool about which the general public is still forming its opinion. However he hopes the self-regulatory code on behavioural targeting recently introduced by the IAB will satisfy everyone. Eyre said: “It is very easy to dismiss the issues as an invasion of privacy but the fact is that behavioural targeting is going to be the future of the internet.”Eyre told ISBA’s annual conference recently that behavioural targeting would be a “game-changer” for advertisers.
PS:  As for Microsoft’s position on privacy, here’s an excerpt from a March 5, 2009 New Media Age story:  “Zuzanna Gierlinska, head of Microsoft Media Network, said, “It’s better that regulation comes from within the market rather than from government, which might not be fully aware of how behavioural targeting works.”  source:  “Industry unites to defend trust in online advertising.”   Suzanne Bearne.  nma.co.uk

Google and WPP Fund Neuromarketing Research for Digital Ads: Ethical Issues and the Need for Policymaker Scrutiny [with an update on the grants!]

The Wall Street Journal and other publications report that Google and ad giant WPP will announce today the $4.6 million grants it will award for academic research designed to “improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.” Among the research efforts given funds are projects that will “analyze internet users’ surfing habits to determine their thinking styles, such as whether they are most influenced by verbal or visual messages or if they are more holistic or analytical, and how to tailor ads accordingly” and an “analysis into how online ads effect blood flow to different areas of the brain. This research would seek to show the role that emotions play in decision making.”   Academics from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard will receive funds, among others. (And for those of us concerned about the role online advertising and data collection is playing in China–and impacts human rights and environmental sustainability–one of the new grants will fund “how Chinese web users respond to different online-ad formats, such as display and search ads”).

As we will tell the European Commission at the end of the month, at a workshop they have organized to discuss interactive advertising and consumer protection, the evolving role of neuromarketing with online advertising raises a number of troubling concerns–and should trigger a serious policy review.   We have not yet seen a final list of the grantees.  But Google should be funding independent research that will honestly explore the impact and ethics of online marketing.  They should be ensuring that the ethical issues of online marketing–such as the concerns raised by their new behavioural profiling and targeting system–receive a honest scholarly review.

The growing controversy over the role pharmaceutical companies are playing with scholarly research on drugs, we think, has implications here.  We believe all the academic institutions receiving these grants must vet them to ensure they truly address the real impact online ad techniques have on individuals and society.

Update:  Google & WPP made the academic research announcement–eleven grants awarded.  Here are some to ponder–and raise questions:

*  “Targeting Ads to Match Individual Cognitive Styles: A Market Test”; Glen Urban, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management;

*  “How do consumers determine what is relevant? A psychometric and neuroscientific study of online search and advertising effectiveness”; Antoine Bechara, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity Institute, University of Southern California and Martin Reimann, Fellow, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity, University of Southern California;

*“Unpuzzling the Synergy of Display and Search Advertising:Insights from Data Mining of Chinese Internet Users”; Hairong Li, Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, Michigan State University and Shuguang Zhao, Media Survey Lab, Tsinghua University;

*”Are Brand Attitudes Contagious? Consumer Response to Organic Search Trends”; Donna L. Hoffman, Professor, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside and Thomas P. Novak, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside;

*“Marketing on the Map: Visual Search and Consumer Decision Making”; Nicolas Lurie, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Management and Sam Ransbotham, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College.

Center for Democracy & Technology Goes for the “Gold” as it Raises $ for its “Gala” from AT&T, eBay, Microsoft, Google (and many other corporations)

CDT is having a “Gala Celebration” next month, supported by “Gold, Silver, and Bronze” sponsors.  AT&T, eBay, Microsoft and Google are listed at the $15,000 “Gold” level [“Two tables in Premium Location-Two tickets to the VIP Reception”]; Among the “Silver” sponsors [“One table-One ticket to the VIP Reception”] at the $7,500 tab include Time Warner (AOL), Dow Lohnes, Qorvis Communications (repping Sun, Cisco, etc), American Express, Verizon, Intel, US Chamber of Commerce, ID Analytics, Yahoo!, Arnold & Porter, IAC/Interactive Corp, Thompson LexisNexis, Hogan & Hartson (reps News Corp’s MySpace, among others), Comcast, and Sonnenschein Nath  & Rosenthal, LLP.   There are also a number of “Bronze” sponsor at the $1000 level [“One seat at a table”]. (CDT has a Facebook page on the event.)

CDT’s 2007 Gala, which honored Bill Gates, had “more than 900″ supporters” in attendance.

Baby Steps for Online Privacy: Why the FTC Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising Fails to Protect the Public

Statement of Jeff Chester, Exec. Director, Center for Digital Democracy:

The Federal Trade Commission is supposed to serve as the nation’s leading consumer protection agency.  But for too long it has buried its mandate in the `digital’ sand, as far as ensuring U.S. consumer privacy is protected online.    The commission embraced a narrow intellectual framework as it examined online marketing and data collection for this proceeding.  Since 2001, the Bush FTC has made industry self-regulation for privacy and online marketing the only acceptable approach when considering any policy safeguards (although the Clinton FTC was also inadequate in this regard as well).  Consequently, FTC staff—placed in a sort of intellectual straitjacket—was hampered in their efforts to propose meaningful safeguards.

Advertisers and marketers have developed an array of sophisticated and ever-evolving data collection and profiling applications, honed from the latest developments in such fields as semantics, artificial intelligence, auction theory, social network analysis, data-mining, and statistical modeling.  Unknown to many members of the public, a vast commercial surveillance system is at the core of most search engines, online video channels, videogames, mobile services and social networks.  We are being digitally shadowed across the online medium, our actions monitored and analyzed.

Behavioral targeting (BT), the online marketing technique that analyzes how an individual user acts online so they can be sent more precise marketing messages, is just one tool in the interactive advertisers’ arsenal.  Today, we are witnessing a dramatic growth in the capabilities of marketers to track and assess our activities and communication habits on the Internet.  Social media monitoring, so-called “rich-media” immersive marketing, new forms of viral and virtual advertising and product placement, and a renewed interest (and growing investment in) neuromarketing, all contribute to the panoply of approaches that also includes BT.  Behavioral targeting itself has also grown more complex.  That modest little “cookie” data file on our browsers, which created the potential for behavioral ads, now permits a more diverse set of approaches for delivering targeted advertising.

We don’t believe that the FTC has sufficiently analyzed the current state of interactive marketing and data collection.  Otherwise, it would have been able to articulate a better definition of behavioral targeting that would illustrate why legislative safeguards are now required.  It should have not exempted “First Party” sites from the Principles; users need to know and approve what kinds of data collection for targeting are being done at that specific online location.

The commission should have created specific policies for so-called sensitive data, especially in the financial, health, and children/adolescent area.  By urging a conversation between industry and consumer groups to “develop more specific standards,” the commission has effectively and needlessly delayed the enactment of meaningful safeguards.

On the positive side, the FTC has finally recognized that given today’s contemporary marketing practices, the distinction between so-called personally identifiable information (PII) and non-PII is no longer relevant.  The commission is finally catching up with the work of the Article 29 Working Party in the EU (the organization of privacy commissioners from member states), which has made significant advances in this area.

We acknowledge that many on the FTC staff worked diligently to develop these principles.  We personally thank them for their commitment to the public interest.  Both Commissioners Leibowitz and Harbour played especially critical roles by supporting a serious examination of these issues.  We urge everyone to review their separate statements issued today.  Today’s release of the privacy principles continues the conversation.  But meaningful action is required.  We cannot leave the American public—now pressed by all manner of financial and other pressures—to remain vulnerable to the data collection and targeting lures of interactive marketing.

FTC’s Behavioral Ad Principles–the last act of the Bush Administration? Why is the Obama White House Allowing the FTC To Remain Under the Leadership Appointed by Pres. Bush?

In a few hours, approximately between 10-11 am eastern, the FTC is expected to release its final “Online Behavioral Advertising Principles.” Originally released for comment in December 2007, the principles are a sort of Valentine’s Day present to the online ad industry from the (supposedly departed) Bush Administration.  From what we know, the FTC principles support self-regulation.  Online marketers will be told they should behave better–and here are suggestions.  It’s like a teacher telling a misbehaving student–‘behave better, dear,’ or else we will have to tell your parent (in this case, the guardian being potential congressional action).

My CDD urged Commissioners Harbour and Leibowitz to issue separate statements on the principles, and call for tougher requirements—especially in the area of so-called sensitive information.  This would include data connected to our financial and health related online activities (think mortgage and loan applications or queries for prescription drugs).  CDD and a coalition of groups also formally asked the commission to impose serious privacy safeguards for both children and adolescents.

But these principles were crafted within the narrow confines of the Bush Administration philosophy prevailing at the FTC.  Only self-regulation is permitted.  Consequently, such an approach likely means these rules leave the online data collection, profiling and targeted marketing system which comprise behavioral marketing off the privacy protection hook.

But one question looms at the moment.  Why has the new Obama administration allowed the FTC to remain under the leadership of Bush-appointee William E. Kovacic? The principles being issued today, in fact, reflect the “old” FTC, not one run under the philosophy of President Obama.  Why is the Obama White House failing to ensure a change of leadership at the FTC?  The agency is responsible for overseeing a huge portion of the economy, including critical financial issues.  It’s also supposed to be the leading agency on consumer protection issues.   The Obama White House should have–by now-found someone who would led the FTC, so it can better protect the public.

The principles being released today were only made possible because of the Bush FTC give-away to Google, when it approved its takeover of online ad giant DoubleClick.  CDD, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and USPIRG fought the merger, including on privacy grounds.  FTC Commissioner Pamela Harbour played a key role forcing the agency (then run by Chairwoman Majoris, whose husband’s law firm represented DoubleClick) to address the privacy concerns. As a consequence of the political pressure from its failure to seriously examine the consumer privacy issues of the Google deal, the FTC staff were told to develop these principles.

The next chair of the FTC needs to take privacy and online consumer protection issues seriously.  The agency does need more resources, but also a new spirit.  If the FTC had been on the job, and was examining how lending institutions were recklessly promoting loans and mortgages, maybe today’s mess wouldn’t be as tragic as it is.  More to come after the commission releases the principles.

The “Revised” Network Advertising Initiative Principles: Ghost-written by Bernard Madoff?

That was really what we felt reading the “NAI Response to Public Comments” released yesterday.  It accompanied the 2008 principles announcement by the self-regulatory trade online marketing trade group.  The “response” is worth reading, because it really reveals the inability of the group to meaningfully address how to protect consumers online.  You would think that an organization which has Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Time Warner and many others as paying members could at least clearly state what happens to our data in the online marketing process.  But the real goal of the NAI is to prevent the enactment of serious state and federal privacy policies that would protect consumers. My group put out a statement yesterday discussing the new principles.

The credibility of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Time Warner are at stake.  They should be able to ensure that their own organization can honestly address the implications of online advertising.  But it’s time to abandon any call for self-regulation.  That has been a failure.  It’s clear that a growing number of consumer and privacy groups are calling for a legislative solution, as well as a more effective FTC.  Responsible online ad companies will support such regulation.

AT&T and a leader of its funded Privacy Forum Raises Questions About the Need for Safeguards

Those busy data collection bees at AT&T–including its funded Future of Privacy Forum co-head–appear to be working to undermine the growing movement supporting consumer privacy protection. According to a news report, a meeting was held last week at the University of Oklahoma on privacy issues. Forum co-director Christopher Wolf, whose law firm represents AT&T, is reported as placing behavioral targeting in a favorable light. Instead of calling for legislation, Wolf suggested that companies should create videos and other technical approaches to serve as supplemental privacy policies.

Also speaking at the event was Keith Epstein, “AT&T’s chief public policy and regulatory compliance counsel.” Here are the last two grafs of the story: There is no legislation pending in Washington regarding online privacy, Epstein said. A legislative solution if it did exist, he said, would be inflexible.

Epstein favored guidelines instead, and said the FTC should be issuing industry standards by the fall of next year.

AT&T’s stance on privacy legislation to protect U.S. consumers is troubling. It will have its deep-packet inspection, all-seeing ISP broadband clout, to monitor and then target each subscriber. AT&T should make it clear it supports legislation which provides real consumer protection (opt-in, transparency, control, extra protections on health, financial and youth data). Where is the privacy leadership at AT&T?

Google’s “Policy Fellowships”–Self-Serving Efforts to Help Ward Off Privacy and Online Marketing Protections?

Google has selected 15 organizations for its 2009 “Google Policy Fellowship.” Fellows are funded by Google and will work on “Internet and technology policy” issues over the summer. Take a look at some of the groups it selected and what they say the projects will be (and their positions on Internet issues). And then ask–is Google working to help undermine the public interest in communications policy? Think online privacy and interactive marketing as you read these following excerpts from a number of these groups:

“The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a 501(c)(3) non-profit public interest organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace…Electronic privacy: CEI seeks to reframe the online privacy debate in terms of the potential benefits to consumers of greater information sharing, transparency, and marketing. Fellows will explore competing privacy policies and how they are evolving as the public grows more aware of privacy risks. This research will also encompass privacy-enhancing technologies that empower consumers to safeguard personal data on an individualized basis.”

“The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) is a market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy… Online Advertising & Privacy Policy Issues: PFF defends online advertising as the lifeblood of online content and services, particularly for the “long tail,” and emphasizes a layered approach to privacy protection, including technological self-help, user education, industry self-regulation, and enforcement of existing laws, as a less restrictive—and generally more effective—alternative to increased regulation.”

“The Technology Policy Institute is a think tank that focuses on the economics of innovation, technological change, and related regulation in the United States and around the world… Privacy and data security: benefits and costs to consumers of online information flows, and the effects of alternative privacy policies on consumers and the development of the Internet.”

“The Cato Institute’s research on telecommunications and information policy advances the Institute’s vision of free minds and free markets within the information policy, information technology, and telecommunications sectors of the American economy…Information Policy: Examining how increased data sensing, storage, transfer, processing, and use affect human values like privacy, fairness and Due Process, personal security, and seclusion. Articulating complex technological, social, and legal issues in ordinary language. Promoting the policies that protect these human values consistent with a free society and maximal human liberty.”

Google is also funding fellowships at other groups, including the partially Google funded Center for Democracy and Technology. The CDT connected Internet Education Foundation (which helps run the Congressional Internet Caucus, where Google is a corporate Advisory member) also will house a Google Fellow. There are a few public interest groups hosting Fellows that have an independent track record, including Media Access Project, EFF, and Public Knowledge. But awarding Fellowships to groups which will help it fight off responsible privacy and online marketing safeguards provides another insight into Google’s own political agenda.