More Bad News on the Privacy Front

Jed Rubenfeld declared the end of privacy in an article that appeared in Stanford Law Review in 2008.  Around the same time, Danial Solove explored the role of social media in eroding privacy in Scientific American. National Public Radio introduced a series on the end of privacy back in 2009.  In January, Science Magazine devoted a special issue to the end of privacy.

But all is not lost!  Contracts can protect our privacy, and corporations routinely agree to privacy policies that restrict their right to sell or otherwise transfer or share the private information they collect when their customers use their services.

Such contractual provisions can protect consumers . . . unless the company itself is sold or transferred to (merged into) another company.  Then the private information that the company has collected just becomes another asset that can get sold off like any other asset.  So says a report in today’s New York Times.  About 85% of the privacy policies of companies reviewed (including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Hulu) provide that “the company might transfer users’ information in case of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, asset sale or other transaction . . . “

D’oh!