Natasha Singer writes:
[…]
In a country where we have a comprehensive federal law — the Fair Credit Reporting Act — giving us the right to obtain and correct financial data collected about us, no general federal statute requires behavioral data marketers to show us our files, says Ms. Rich of the F.T.C.
So, is the European model, involving independent government agencies called Data Protection Commissions that are charged with safeguarding people’s personal information, better than ours?
Europe’s privacy commissioners have generally been more forward-looking, examining potential privacy intrusions like biometric tracking, while the F.T.C. is still trying to understand the magnitude and the implications of the Web, says Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research group in Washington.
“The U.S. system with regard to privacy is not working,” Mr. Rotenberg says.
Read more in the New York Times.