American Civil Liberties Union

(Originally posted on Daily Kos.)

When we update our status on Facebook, post those photos on Flickr, or shop for holiday gifts on Amazon, a whole lot happens behind the scenes. The more we do online, the more digital footprints we leave behind. Many sites we visit collect detailed information about us—our politics, hobbies, relationships and more.

Originally posted at the ACLU of Northern California's blog, Bytes and Pieces

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) set off a minor firestorm in the blogosphere over its new ID policy, which went into effect this past Saturday. At least one passenger has reported that he was asked which political party he is registered to vote for, as part of TSA's new authentication process.

Your online activities say a lot about you: what you like, where you go and even who you know. And companies are often eager to collect this kind of detailed information about you. So we’re pleased that the FTC has joined the chorus calling for companies and lawmakers to give us all greater control over our own personal information.

One of the key elements of the FTC’s proposal is a “do not track” list. This would allow us to opt out of online tracking, preventing companies from collecting information about the web sites and pages we visit. It’s almost impossible for anyone to manage all of the different layers of controls on all of the different online sites. That’s why it’s important to have a single, easy-to-use control over whether information about the web sites we visit can be collected and used.

Facebook has been taking heat for its recent privacy-unfriendly practices, from the "privacy transition" that took away privacy controls to "instant personalization" that instantly shares personal information with third party pages without the user's consent. In response, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published an op-ed in the Washington Post today, claiming that Facebook has "heard the feedback" and now realizes that "people want easier control over their information." But we don't just want simpler settings that limit our choices and force us to share information broadly or not at all—we want real control, and we want it to be the default.