In an op-ed for The New York Times, Natasha Singer writes the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee should take a different approach to its upcoming hearing with tech companies and telecommunication firms over their privacy practices. Rather than focusing on privacy policies, Singer believes the committee should look at the business practices of those companies instead. “The problem is unfettered data exploitation and its potential deleterious consequences — among them, unequal consumer treatment, financial fraud, identity theft, manipulative marketing and discrimination,” Singer writes. “In other words, asking companies whose business models revolve around exploiting data-based consumer-influence techniques to explain their privacy policies seems about as useful as asking sharks to hold forth on veganism.” (Registration may be required to access this story.)
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