Earlier today I helped ALEC with transparency and accountability by providing ALEC Model Legislation As Torrent, which is all the data from ALEC Exposed, cleaned up a bit and presented as a single directory structure.
I started poking around in the Telecom stuff since that’s my field and a lot of it is, well, boring. I figured there’d be great evil in the Wireless Communications Tower Siting Act. Alas, it’s just some sensible rules to keep municipalities from gumming up radio tower installs.
But then I spotted Principles on Online Privacy and I knew the lulz were close at hand …
Summary: The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes that the Internet has flourished due in large part to the unregulated environment in which it has developed and grown. Self-regulation, industry-driven standards, individual empowerment and a market environment generally promise greater future success than intrusive governmental regulation.
In order to secure the economic growth and vitality of the electronic marketplace, The American Legislative Exchange Council has developed the following principles regarding the preservation of online privacy:
1. The private sector should lead. For electronic commerce to flourish, the private sector must continue to lead through self-regulation. Innovation, expanded services, broader participation, and lower prices will arise in a market driven arena, not in an environment that operates as a regulated industry.
2. Government should avoid undue restrictions on electronic commerce. Parties should be able to enter into legitimate agreements to buy and sell products and services across the Internet with minimal government involvement or intervention. Unnecessary regulation of commercial activities will distort development of the electronic marketplace by
decreasing the supply and raising the costs of products and services for the consumer.
Governments should refrain fromimposing new and unnecessary regulations and bureaucratic procedures on commercial activities that take place via the Internet.
3. The marketplace is working. The online market has responded favorably and swiftly to consumer concerns regarding the collection and use of personal information. Among other privacy improvements, studies have found that Web sites are collecting less information and privacy notices are more prevalent, prominent and complete. Dynamic market forces have encouraged commercial Web sites to reduce the use of third party cookies, to track Internet surfing behavior, and third party sharing of information. What these studies demonstrate is that the market is responding to consumer concerns, without
burdensome government regulation.
4. To the greatest extent possible, individuals should be directing their privacy choices. The most effective privacy policies provide notice, choice, security, and access; individuals should be free to select the policy that best fits their needs.
This is a crock on so very many levels it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s distill it down into Randian free market dogma.
1. Corporations know what’s best for you. 2. Government is always an impediment. 3. The market will punish bad actors – no consequences are required for cheats, just wait for them to go out of business. 4. Humans should face their corporate masters alone, uninformed but for what corporations permit them to know.
So when the next HBGary spies on you or your kids because you’re a Progressive activist in the gunsights of the Chamber of Commerce, just wait patiently for the market to gently correct their misconduct.
When Apple tracks your every move and then starts carefully analyzing your travels so the corporations along your path can maximize their take from your wallet, don’t expect your Attorney General to do anything about it. That’s just the market being efficient … at wiping out local business in favor of transnational chains paying slave labor rates overseas.
And when market pressures drive an arm of tabloid aggregator News Corp to break into the voicemail of a murdered thirteen year old girl, despoiling evidence so they can profit from the agonized messages from her friends …
You see where this is going. ALEC’s vision for America is you, alone, uninformed, and with no recourse against whatever thievery or deception some sleazy corporation wants to run against you. Their “privacy market” document ought to rightly be named the Corporate Anarchist’s Infowar Manifesto.