Online Ad Lobby to Consumers: You Can't See or Control Your Information!

Who owns and controls your information?  You the individual---or the data brokers that now can collect everything you do online and off.  The public got its answer yesterday.  The lobbying group representing Google, Facebook, Yahoo and the unaccountable digital data mining industry say they get to decide whether a consumer can access and control their own information.  These folks have a future working with Mr. Putin at the Kremlin!
 
The online data collectors are terrified about a new FTC recommendation that Congress enact legislation ensuring that data brokers are accountable to consumers.  They fear that once the public learns more (as they soon will) about how all their information about health, finances, kids, personal tastes, etc is mixed and matched with powerful offline credit databases that there will be a day of political reckoning.  That's why the online and offline data lobbies are mobilizing now--to have their allies fight off reasonable consumer protection policies that place a consumer first.
 
In testimony yesterday before a House Commerce Subcommittee, the Interactive Ad Bureau ("represents over 500 leading companies...responsible for selling over 86% of online advertising in the U.S.") had the temerity to say this:  "Providing individual access and correction rights to such data...would be prohibitively costly."  He perhaps inadvertently explained why the online data lobby is fearful when he told Congress:  "...virtually every publisher site, advertiser, ad network or analytics firm collects or share data with other parties..."   What this means, as you know, is that online marketers have created a system which mixes, matches and sells off our information in real time (to virtually anyone who has the dough), without ever thinking about the implications.  It's information on individuals--humans.  Not some commodity that can be traded without regard to the rights an individual must have (especially in a democratic society).  This same lobbyist also claimed (and I assume our friends in the EU realize how backward the IAB is here) that:  "Online advertising is not generally personally identifable and is not generally maintained in a format that would be meaningful for consumers."  This absurd notion flies in the face of an industry generating some $30b in US revenues, primarily due to data collection targeting of individual online users.
 
The IAB is also unwilling to engage in even public discussions on key privacy and consumer protection issues--the Obama Administration's so-called "multistakeholder" process.  Off-the-table, they argue, should be any issue covered by the industry's self-dealing Code of Conduct (based, you will recall, on a tiny graphical icon that even those with 20/20 vision would miss!). 
 
Another witness yesterday, Pam Horan of the Online Publishers Association, made a startling admission. Also responding to the FTC's recommendation on data broker legislation, Ms. Horan said that:  "Publishers are actively working to monitor, track and limit the data collection activities of third parties on their websites...However, based on the complex nature of the Internet today, the number of partners and service providers changes frequently and dynmically, making this a daunting task."
 
In other words, the major online websites don't even know who is collecting our data and tracking us!   That's because they are forced to be part of a system (such as ad exchanges), which places the interests of monetizing a consumers data ahead of their privacy.  Stay tuned folks for what will soon be an even more interesting political ride!