But, those of you who live under rocks say, what IS this TrustE thing? Well, like all industries who've been shamelessly taking advantage of their customers, the e-commerce industry saw the mighty, meaty fist of government regulation being slowly raised above them, and came up with a brilliantly evil plan. "We can regulate ourselves!" they exclaimed, slapping each other on the back. "Government intervention isn't needed!" And so was born TrustE, a 'regulatory' group who gave labels to any site that posted a privacy policy and upheld it. Any privacy policy at all. They could post a label which read 'You have no privacy at all. In fact, our product transmits a 24-hour live video feed to our corporate headquarters, and we intend to post the highlights onto our public web site.' and still probably get a TrustE label.
Nobody except the really die-hard libertarians ever expected this to work, and even they probably suspected they were just deluding themselves. Raping customers privacy is how many of these e-commerce companies make their money. Asking a company not to make money is like asking a three year old not to steal from the cookie jar. Sure, it can be done. But if they succeed at it, there's something just plain wrong with them. It's downright un-natural.
So, now we've got multiple Microsoft privacy flops, followed by RealNetworks showing their competance level by being caught with their entire head wedged into the cookie jar and then attempting to deny it while they ran about the kitchen like a cartoon character. Apparently there were multiple sneaky things RealNetworks software was transmitting in the background, and instead of fessing up when they were caught for the first time, they had to get slapped multiple times.
And, of course, TrustE claims it's 'not their jurisdition', despite the fact that this is the sort of thing they are supposedly intended to block. After all, Real Networks is one of their Corporate Sponsors. And we must be loyal to the sponsors, right?
At the top of the list of 'signs you have utterly failed', we have, 'when the guy who came up with the idea says "okay, this just plain is not working."'
Duh.
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