You’re being watched when you’re online. If that makes you uneasy, لستم وحدكم. Online privacy—especially in the social-media sphere—is becoming an increasingly contentious issue, but it’s one that largely is left to companies like Google and Facebook to decide. As sites and service-providers struggle to balance the interests of their users against the interests of their business, the question emerges: Is it time for the government to step up and enforce stricter regulation?

Experts say 2011 might just be the year where digital privacy will come to the forefront in Washington. مثلا, the Boucher-Stearns bill, drafted by Rick Boucher, a Democrat from Virginia, and Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida, would require all websites to inform users how they collect and use personally identifiable information, like phone numbers or addresses. الشهر الماضي, the Federal Trade Commission proposed “لا تتبع” technology that would be added to websites in order to allow users to “opt out,” making their actions on the site unrecorded.

It’s unclear so far which websites would be required to include the technology, or if the button would be built directly into the browser. But according to some, even if do-not-track and opt-out policies were to be adopted, the United States would still have a relatively laissez-faire attitude toward online privacy compared to much of the rest of the developed world.

من خلال Is 2011 the Year of a Digital Privacy Revolution?.