• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, September 3, 2010

As part of a new initiative to urge Congress to create a do-not-track list, Consumer Watchdog has posted a video taking aim at Google for its privacy policy.

The 94-second clip features Google CEO Eric Schmidt as an ice cream truck driver. He pulls up to three kids and offers them "free" ice cream, all the while grinning maniacally. He says sotto voce, "There's no such thing as a free ice cream" before telling a technician to start a full-body scan of the kids. Then he turns back to the children to tell them they can't believe everything their parents say about privacy. "Timmy," he asks, "does Mommy know that Daddy spends his whole workday surfing sports Web sites?"

The spot concludes with Consumer Watchdog asking viewers to support creation of a do-not-track list "to prevent online companies from gathering our personal information." Federal Trade Commission Chair Jon Leibowitz recently told Congress that the agency was considering proposing a mechanism that would allow consumers to opt out of all behavioral targeting.

While the clip is, perhaps, over-the-top -- and while observers are raising questions about Consumer Watchdog's own practices -- the effort nonetheless is notable for a few reasons. First, the clip addresses privacy head-on, without also raising concerns about identity theft or other security issues. In the past, discussions about privacy have tended to get bogged down with questions about online fraud -- probably because the legal system tends to look for tangible economic harm.

But privacy advocates seem to be focusing now on how public disclosure of people's Web activity could prove problematic even without harm in the traditional economic sense; Timmy's father might not lose any money if his wife learns that he spends the day reading about sports, but that doesn't mean he wants it known.

And, while Google obviously isn't conducting "full-body scans," other companies' plans to collect biometric data remain in doubt. Consider, Apple just applied to patent a system to take photos of users "without a flash, any noise, or any indication that a picture is being taken to prevent the current user from knowing he is being photographed," according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Additionally, the technology being patented by Apple would record the user's voice, and glean users' heartbeats.

Google, meantime, continues to store logs tying people's search queries to IP addresses -- a practice condemned by European regulators and one that could potentially expose matters that people thought were private. While users can opt out of Google's tracking cookie, the company doesn't allow people to opt out of its IP logs. Google says that it won't reveal information that could tie users to their IP addresses without a court order, but just the fact that the company collects and stores such data means that it could potentially be revealed.