Mistakes were made. That was the essential acknowledgment of Facebook founder and CEO this week, in light of a proposed settlement of privacy violations with the Federal Trade Commission. The settlement means that Facebook will not change privacy controls in a way that makes private information publicly accessible without permission from the user, and the company will adopt a comprehensive privacy policy (with two new privacy officers) to guide its work. You can read the actual settlement here and a summary of the ACLU's views on the settlement here.
Resolving one dispute with one (admittedly huge) company will not fix all the problems in our interconnected world. One place to start on that project is with an update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. After all, are you still using any technology that was current in 1986? We need new federal privacy protections that take account of the vast amounts of personal data circulating on the internet, and we need a law that protects consumers.
