The Information Economy Stops Evolving Today

That would be the message if a bill introduced in Congress this week were to pass. H.R. 5777 is the “Building Effective Strategies To Promote Responsibility Accountability Choice Transparency Innovation Consumer Expectations and Safeguards Act” or the “BEST PRACTICES Act.” If acronyms were a basis for judging legislation, it should be widely hailed as a masterwork.


But its substance is concerning, to say the least. The bill’s scope is massive: Just about every person or business that systematically collects information would be subject to a new federal regulatory regime governing information practices. By systematic, I mean: If you get a lot of emails or run a website that collects IP addresses (and they all do), you’re governed by the bill.


There’s one exception to that: The bill specifically exempts the government. What chutzpah our government has to point the finger at us while its sprawling administrative data collection and surveillance infrastructure spiral out of control.


Reviewing the bill, I found it interesting to consider what you get when you take a variety of today’s information “best practices” and put them into law. Basically, you freeze in place how things work today. You radically simplify and channel all kinds of information practices that would otherwise multiply and variegate.


I spoke about this yesterday with CNet News’ Declan McCullagh:

Harper says it reminds him of James C. Scott’s book, “Seeing Like A State.” Governments and big corporations “radically simplify what they oversee to make it governable,” he said. “In things like forestry and agriculture, this has had devastating environmental effects because ecosystems don’t function when you eliminate the thousands of ‘illegible’ relationships and interactions. This is Seeing Like a State for the information economy.”

Give people remedies when they’re harmed by information practices, and then leave well enough alone. There’s no place for a list of “must-do’s” and “can’t-do’s” that choke our nascent information economy—especially not coming from a government that doesn’t practice what it preaches.