Your Online Privacy
By: Joanne | March 17, 2009 | Category: General

I’m at the South by Southwest Interactive festival and a few days ago, I went to an interesting session about privacy, specifically online privacy. It’s something that concerns us all when we use social networking sites, or shop online, or even do a simple search on a commercial search engine. I hear it all the time and heard it in the session too: people are especially concerned about their privacy on government websites. The good news is that there are lots of laws and regulations related to privacy and government websites, and I think that in many ways that’s a good thing. We should be free to browse and interact on government websites without the fear that our personal information is gathered and aggregated and used for some unknown purpose.
At the same time there are a lot of really good reasons why government websites may want to gather personal information. If we could do it, we could deliver information and services in a more personal and effective way. I imagine a world where I could visit a government website, sign in with a username and password and then have a dashboard that would tell me useful things relevant to my life. Maybe I would see my property tax bill and be able to click a button to pay it, or renew my driver’s license when it expires, or see an estimate of my future social security benefits.
It sounds pretty easy, doesn’t it? I love the idea of integrating local, state and federal information in one location. I mean, why not? Wouldn’t this be a real convenience? Isn’t it silly and outdated that my property tax bill and driver’s license renewal and social security estimate are all paper that comes to me in the mail?
The hurdles are more than just technology, and there are a few key things that have to happen to get us there. First, government on every level will have to update existing laws and regulations to allow this sharing of information and, to protect its usage, citizens should be able to opt in, so they can chose to participate, or not. Lastly, websites that collect information have to be completely clear and honest about how the information will be used, not used, shared and not shared. What else needs to happen to make the public comfortable with this?
![]()
Permalink
| View Comments [0]
|
E-mail This Entry
| Tags:
identity
internet
joanne
online
privacy

If you're anything like me, you've been doing your best to avoid any retail places during the holiday season. I'd love to shake the hand of whoever invented online shopping!
Use the 