Privacy Dashboard

Remember when I wrote this? In it I suggested:

Is it too much to ask, I keep asking, to ask our online services to provide us:

– Access to a record of all the information they keep on us and how they use it

– The ability to challenge that data’s accuracy, and edit it for accuracy

– The ability to opt out (with a clear understanding of the resulting loss of services and opportunities that might result)

– The ability to set permissions as to who else might see the data

– The right to maintain a user copy of that data for archival purposes

– The right to share in the value of that data on negotiated terms

Is that so freaking hard to do? I sense that, increasingly, there is a market opportunity in doing this. I bet 95% of the public will never edit, or even view the data more than once. But the sense that the control panel is there, just in case, will be invaluable to establishing trust.

I later called this a Data Bill of Rights.

Danny just asked Google about this idea in light of the Privacy Intl kerfluffle (his post is long and very good) and Google’s recent post on “How Long Should Google Remember Searches?”, and he found out Google is seriously considering that approach. From Danny’s post:

I asked Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer about this yesterday, when talking to him about the Privacy International survey.

“We’re thinking hard internally along the digital dashboard-type of approach. Is there a way to give users a dashboard and visibility to all these elements and give them control,” he said. “It would be hugely complicated to build, but in terms of that vision, I completely share it, and we’re having deep discussions about it.”

Way cool.