A new bill has been introduced in the US Senate, which if passed, will result in a do not track mechanism coming into effect. The bill supported enthusiastically by the civil rights and privacy avocation groups in America will provide anonymity to the internet users.
Legislative Counsel at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), Mr. Chris Calabrese has called the bill crucial to the civil liberties protection. The main concern addressed by the bill is the leaking of confidential user information gathered mainly to fetch customized ads for the user, into the databases which in turn are used by law enforcement and government agencies. In the opinion of Calabrese, this is wrong practice. Internet users should be provided “practical anonymity” to comment and read debatable material, and allowed to engage themselves in non-mainstream groups.
He further stated in a press conference that the present day economic model offers incentives for tracking. If consumers aren’t provided the option to pull out, a detailed report of their online activities is created, which is outside their control.
The issue is that more and more people are spending most of their time on internet. Smartphones have made it even easier to stay connected from anywhere and therefore users are continuously sending out their habits and information to unreliable entities. As an example, typing any keyword into the Facebook status update or comments section throws up several targeted ads on the right hand side of the page. Although you can prevent the system from using your information, you can’t prevent the system from gathering it. The ‘Do Not Track’ bill hopes to tackle that issue.
