Amid growing controversy over privacy breaches and new marketing initiatives from Facebook and others, the annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference has drawn up a 14-point "Bill of
Rights" for social network users which was published on Tuesday. The Bill of Rights says a lot about how bad the situation has become: It's kind of pathetic that CFP should even have to include "allow
me to delete my account," for example.
Even more revealing is the fact that Facebook said in a statement that "we don't agree with all of the proposed elements of the Bill of Rights for
social-network users." Reading over the following list, I am at a loss to guess which provisions Facebook takes issue with. However, maybe I'm too quick to judgment -- and I'd be interested to hear
what readers think about these.
User Bill of Rights
1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.
2. Clarity: Make sure that policies, terms of service, and settings
are easy to find and understand.
3. Freedom of speech: Do not delete or modify my data without a clear policy and justification.
4. Empowerment: Support assistive technologies and
universal accessibility.
5. Self-protection: Support privacy-enhancing technologies.
6. Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others.
7. Control: Let me control my data, and don't facilitate sharing it unless I agree first.
8. Predictability: Obtain my prior consent before significantly changing who can see my data.
9.
Data portability: Make it easy for me to obtain a copy of my data.
10. Protection: Treat my data as securely as your own confidential data unless I choose to share it, and notify me if it is
compromised.
11. Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.
12. Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and
use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.
13. Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal punitive actions.
14. Right to withdraw: Allow me to delete my account, and remove my data.