Dec. 23, 2007.
This was written in 2003. This was the beginning of it all. When the tide changed on an internet, now a vast, corrupt monopoly of surveillance and tracking. The fleecing of America. In
"Internet privacy has remained the hottest issue of the past few years. Several profitable companies, including eBay.com, Amazon.com, drkoop.com, and Yahoo.com have either changed users' privacy settings or have changed privacy policies to the detriment of users.
A series of companies, including Intel and Microsoft, were discovered to have released products that secretly track the activities of Internet users.
Users have filed several lawsuits under the wiretap and computer crime laws.
In several cases,
TRUSTe, an industry-sponsored self-regulation watchdog group ruled that the practices did not violate its privacy seal program.
Significant controversy arose around online profiling, the practice of advertising companies to track Internet users and compile dossiers on them in order to target banner advertisements.
The largest of these advertisers, DoubleClick, ignited widespread public outrage when it began attaching personal information from a marketing firm it purchased to the estimated 100 million previously anonymous profiles it had collected.
The company backed down due to public opposition, a dramatic fall in its stock price and investigations from the FTC and several state attorneys general.
In July 2000 the Federal Trade Commission reached an agreement with the Network Advertisers Initiative, a group consisting of the largest online advertisers including DoubleClick, which will allow for online profiling and any future merger of such databases to occur with only the opt-out consent.
In January 2001, the FTC dropped its investigation of DoubleClick. However, several private lawsuits were filed against DoubleClick. In January 2001, DoubleClick closed its online profiling division, and in May 2002, privacy class actions suits against the company were settled that resulted in little or no benefit to Internet users.
Intel announced in May 2000 that it was dropping the incorporation of unique identifiers in its next-generation computer processors following a consumer boycott."
Privacy and Human Rights 2003: United States of America Privacy International
This is from 2003. eBay and the companies mentioned have a monopoly on illegal tracking of internet users of all walks of life who access a computer.
Merry Christmas, America.
And now an open letter to Google:
http://www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-553964
