Slate explores the implications of a proposed FTC settlement with Google over its Buzz social network, questioning the impact of required privacy audits included in the proposal. "There's a good chance that privacy regulators--spurred by a public that doesn't really know what it wants when it comes to online privacy--may go too far," Farhad Manjoo writes in the report, suggesting that if companies are blocked from analyzing users' data, "profound implications for the future of computing" will result. While many fear that it is becoming harder to differentiate between anonymous online data and PII, Manjoo points to Internet innovations in suggesting, "tracking is not always a bad thing."
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