James B. Rule, a researcher at the Center for the Study of Law and Society at UC Berkeley and the author of “Privacy in Peril: How We Are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience,” has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times today. He writes, in part:
The privacy-eroding forces at work in America’s data extravaganza are now so deeply ingrained that only fundamental change in the legal status of personal data can offer hope against them. We need a new kind of federal property right over commercialization of one’s own personal data. Such a right would resemble that of artists and writers over the use of their works, requiring permission and compensation, if desired, from those who wish to reproduce what they’ve created. For personal information, the new right would permit no commercial transfer without explicit consent.
But in practice, a right like this would foster a new kind of information industry: data rights agencies.
Read more on the Los Angeles Times.