At the 2010 Consumer Privacy Consultation conference, held in Calgary Alberta Canada this week, FTC officials met with their counterparts at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) to discuss privacy issues related to cloud computing practices and their implications for individuals, organizations, and businesses.
Kathryn Ratte, a senior attorney in the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said that existing privacy laws create a mish-mash of different privacy policies on the Internet, and that its almost impossible for consumers to compare the privacy practices of different companies.
“To compare the privacy policies of two companies is an almost impossible task.”
Privacy laws on the Internet typically rely on disclosure requirements for data collection and use, and on consumers being informed. “In some very basic sense it isn’t working,” said Ratte.
Recent weeks have seen online privacy concerns escalate in the minds of consumers and the media. Google is facing a high profile investigation of its data collection activities in relation to google street view, and Facebook has come under scrutiny for recent changes to their privacy policies and tools.
Some suggest that the FTC is considering increased regulation of cloud computing services. The ability of cloud services “to collect and centrally store increasing amounts of consumer data, combined with the ease with which such centrally stored data may be shared with others, create a risk that larger amounts of data may be used by entities not originally intended or understood by consumers,” said David Vladeck, Director FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection at a privacy roundtable meeting in January 2010 at Berkeley, CA.
