Obama Opens Door For Do-Not-Track Button With Online Privacy Bill of Rights

President's hard-line stance forces Google to reassess policy.

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A sign of the times, President Obama yesterday proposed a bill of rights exclusively focusing on Internet privacy, coming on the heels of Facebook’s ongoing problems over the past couple of years and Google’s cookie controversy revealed just days ago.

The bill called for several principles: individual consumer control of collected data (including access for reasons of accuracy), consumer respect for the context of data collecting, transparency over corporate tracking policies, secure handling of collected data by corporations, and accountability for corporations who fail to abide by the bill.

The move subsequently put the onus on the 400 web firms comprising the Digital Advertising Alliance to adopt a “do-not-track” initiative. Thereby, the likes of Google, following in the footsteps of Firefox and Internet Explorer will enact a “do not track” button in Chrome by the end of the year, allowing users one-touch control over the dissemination of their private data.

[via Wall Street Journal via Gizmodo]

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