Dear privacy wonks, I've just read a NY Times story reporting on U.S. business and governmental lobbying of the European Parliament to weaken what are characterized as current European proposals, including: "Web businesses would be unable to perform basic collecting and profiling of individual computer users unless they gave their explicit consent as part of policies that allow them to specify what kinds of information could be collected and for what purpose." As I understand it, however, the requirement for such consent is already law under the recently amended EU ePrivacy Directive. While not all websites respond this way (yet - but the law, as I understand it, allows some time for implementation), many in my experience on this side of the pond are already compliant, i.e., at first visit there is a request for consent to accept the use of cookies (e.g., most recently, at <http://ccc.ku.dk/calendar/2013/methodologies_of_mobile/>). Of course, as a philosopher, my relationship with reality, much less the U.S. and European legal systems, is a strained and tortured one, so I'm more than willing to accept that I'm wrong on one or more counts here. So help, please. Did the Times get this bit wrong? (and, gasp!) And/or - what else am I missing? Many thanks in advance, - charles ess Associate Professor in Media Studies Department of Media and Communication Director, Centre for Research on Media Innovations <http://www.hf.uio.no/imk/english/research/center/media-innovations/> University of Oslo P.O. Box 1093 Blindern NO-0317 Oslo Norway email: charles.ess@media.uio.no