It s actually his wife s friend, but that doesn t matter right now. Now if we start to regulate, he s going to have to pay for a lawyer, he s going to have to get more people to help him. But from where he sits, struggling with Internet privacy, and Internet regulation, is downright dangerous. This is not just a pattern of an overworked agency. It s a truth that Swindle said is helping him decide that industry must take the lead in regulating, not government.
Government can t react fast enough.
Leading roles in educating Swindle applauded people like Time Warner Inc. CEO Gerald Levin and IBM executives who have taken leading roles in educating business CEOs on their responsibilities, the first steps toward industry self-regulation. Levin said at the Aspen Summit that he s helped create a worldwide conference that has been meeting with executives from across the world to talk about their new responsibilities in the dotcom age. Yet, Swindle points out, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission continue to try to lay the groundwork for laws. Online companies, he believes, for the most part are providing their own notifications of privacy policies, which he estimates may be as high as 90 percent of the e-commerce Web. Almost all of the 100 sites most trafficked by consumers are providing notice of their privacy policies, Swindle said.