Privacy is better left to the private sector
May 21, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Capitalist tool, Forbes magazine, has two pieces on the virtues of leaving the issue of privacy to the private sector. Lee Gomes sets it up by writing about the “Hidden Costs of Privacy”and editor William Baldwin follows-through by commenting that the free markets will ultimately provide a more secure and efficient privacy solution (“Privacy for Sale”). Baldwin has a great line:
“There’s another cost to legislated privacy solutions, even when they work. They impede, so to speak, the body’s natural defenses. They slow down the innovation that the marketplace could bring to bear on the problem.”
When one considers what the private sector did to fix (eradicate?) the problem of pop-ups and spy-ware, Baldwin’s comments make abundant sense.
