Peter Eckersley of EFF comments:
There is a lot of discussion about Do Not Track at the moment. The FTC has announced supportfor the idea; Mozilla has added a Do Not Track header option into Firefox betas, and Congresswoman Jackie Speier has introduced a Do Not Track bill. Other proposed privacy legislation, such as Rep. Bobby Rush’s bill, could also achieve similar objectives. And yesterday, EFF submitted comments urging the Federal Trade Commission to defend online privacy by supporting the header-based Do Not Track feature.
[…]
Do Not Track is a technically simple proposal: add a header1 to the messages that browsers and other HTTP clients send when they fetch web pages. The header simply requests that webservers not track the user’s behavior. It could be turned on if the user enters “private browsing mode”, or if they have enabled a separate configuration setting.
There is more flexibility on the policy side of Do Not Track: “what is tracking?” “what should websites do to avoid tracking users who set the DNT header?” “would any websites be required to comply with the header?
Read the full commentary and explanation on EFF.