Perspective: The New Urgency To Fix Online Privacy

Reprinted with permission from CNet.com.

A decade ago, I started writing about online privacy issues. At the time, legal colleagues told me that while they found the topic interesting from an academic standpoint, it had no real world applications. They encouraged me instead to focus on "real" upcoming problems, like Y2K.

Undeterred, I explained that there would come a time when good privacy translated into good business, and bad privacy meant horrible business. That time has arrived.

Y2K came and went without much lasting effect. But privacy protection has become a real world industry of its own. Unfortunately, privacy and security breaches regularly occur these days. Indeed, the recently concluded meeting of the International Association of Privacy Professionals in San Francisco bore witness to just how important privacy issues have become to businesses, government, educational institutions, and of course, individuals.