Online Social Networks and E-Commerce - MIT Computer Science ...

Clarence Lee and Shirley Fung
an estimate of over one million USD was spent within the SecondLife economy over the past twenty four
hours (Second Life Economics Statistics Page, 2007).
Given the massive amount of information aggregated at each of these sites, it raises two important
questions: 1) whether all this data should be centralized in one service, and 2) whether the current privacy
protection standards are sufficient to safeguard the interest of consumers.
The first question poses interesting legislative possibilities to prevent the monopolization of information.
However, on the downside, this would inhibit innovation on the business side and convenience on the
end-user side. For the scope of this paper, this issue will not be discussed, since an accountability
structure applies whether an information monopoly exists or not.
The second question points the user to seek what is currently available to protect the user privacy. As
mentioned before, currently the best systems for privacy protection available are non-profit watchdog
organizations such as TRUSTe to look out for the best interest of consumers. However, the biggest
problem with this system is the lack of accountability. It is easy to see that in a brick-and-motor analogy,
sensitive user personal information such as billing information and medical history would be guarded
with the utmost care. Storage facilities would employ guards, install safes, and use other security measure
to prevent theft of such valuable information. In addition, standards and law are in place to hold
organizations accountable to safeguard this information. Considering that online information can be
copied with more ease than tangible physical documents, and digital storage makes it possible to
aggregate information ten to hundreds of orders of magnitude than a physical storage house, shouldn’t we
have a better accountability measure to ensure the protection of digital information?
Hence, for this proposal, we will first compare the privacy philosophy of the United States versus that of
the European Union and the advantages of the European Union Directive on Data Protection. Then, we
will propose similar guidelines based on the privacy regulation with the financial industry brought on by
the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
The U.S. Approach on Privacy Protection
The United States currently takes a sectored approach to data protection and privacy legislation. Instead
of using an over-arching governmental structure like the EU Directive, it relies on a combination of
legislation, regulation, and self-regulation to protect user data. In 1997 report titled “A Framework for
Global Electronic Commerce, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore stated that
the private sector should lead the efforts in self-regulation in order to protect the consumer from
problems brought by the advancement of Internet technology (Clinton & Gore, 1997). As a result, United
States does not have a comparable privacy law such as the EU Directive, and privacy law in the United
States are adopted on an as-need basis.
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