Privacy: Issues, Policies, Statements - Methods Of Online Surveillance, E-commerce And Privacy, Workplace Privacy, Children And Privacy

Few Internet-related issues have generated as much controversy, conflict, and concern as privacy. The debate encompasses freedom of expression, security of intellectual property, marketers' abilities to gather information about consumers on the Web, workplace productivity, and rights of Internet users. Governments, industry, and citizen-advocacy groups are struggling to define workable privacy guidelines and enforcement procedures that will satisfy all parties in the rapidly changing universe of the commercial Internet. As data-collection technologies such as cookies, Web-crawlers, and Web cameras proliferate, the issue becomes more pressing.

Activity on the Internet in the early 2000s continued to increase rapidly, and with it, the rate of personal data collection, commercial transactions, and surveillance of Web users. Americans thus have grown more concerned about safeguarding their privacy online. A 2000 Pew Internet & American Life Project survey reported that 86 percent of the 1,017 Internet users polled wanted legal requirements mandating that Internet companies gain explicit permission to collect personal data online. Furthermore, 54 percent felt that tracking users' movements online constituted an invasion of personal privacy.

Many groups have motives for collecting and storing users' personal information online. Governmental and law-enforcement officials contend that access to such information spurs rapid identification of criminals, helping to combat credit fraud, terrorism, and illegal immigration. Businesses have a seemingly insatiable appetite for minute details about the identities and personal habits of online consumers. This information enables them to tailor promotions and advertising in hopes of generating sales and increased profits. Individual Web users appreciate the ease and efficiency provided by personalized Web sites, which store credit card information for future purchases, remember passwords, and modify Web pages automatically to cater to their interests.

But commercial and governmental organizations can compromise the privacy of online users. For example, Toysmart.com, an online toy retailer, contained a privacy statement guaranteeing that it would not make its customer list available to outside organizations. But when its operation failed amid the dotcom shakeout, Toysmart.com attempted to sell its customer database to a third party. In another retail example, in the year 2000, the online bookseller Amazon.com faced a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) probe and two privacy-invasion lawsuits charging it improperly handled the personal information stored in its online database. Meanwhile, government data was called into question when Image Data Inc. entered into a $1.5 million contract in 1997 with the U.S. Secret Service to digitize drivers' licenses and other personal data in order to create a national identity database for governmental use. A three-state pilot program was launched, only to be halted after widespread media coverage revealed the program's existence. Government surveillance was again at stake in July 2000, when it was disclosed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was using an Internet monitoring system called Carnivore, which it installed in Internet service providers' sites to monitor their traffic. Carnivore became the object of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit brought against the FBI by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). By January 2001, the FBI had complied in part with the FOIA request to release documents regarding the information Carnivore had gathered.