We give up an enormous amount of our private information just to take part in the modern economy, and communicate with modern technology. Credit card companies track all of our purchases, online email providers mine our emails for contextual clues to what we're interested in, social networking sites gather detailed pictures of what we're interested in and who are friends are.

And, up to now, there are remarkably few rules on what they can do with it. John Kerry and John McCain recently introduced the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights to try to set the rules of the road. Today, they wrote in The Hill explaining what it's all about:

Last year, Internet users sent 107 trillion emails, Facebook hosted 600 million users, Twitter hosted 155 million tweets per day, and Americans across the country shared personal data when checking into hotels, shopping for groceries and refilling their cars. In many ways, all this information sharing is good for consumers. When companies collect data and use it with high ethical standards and the full knowledge and participation of their customers, they can generate immense economic activity, innovate and tailor the services they deliver to the clients they serve. 

But today the data collectors are setting the rules. Companies can harvest our personal information and keep it for as long as they like. They can use it and sell it without asking permission. You shouldn’t have to be a computer genius to figure out how to opt out of a company’s information sharing policy. In short, these companies, from mobile phone operators to hotels to websites, can do almost whatever they want with our personal information, and we have no legal right to stop them. 

That’s why we introduced the The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights to keep our private data safe by laying down fair information practices for anyone collecting it. Our legislation will ensure that businesses collecting personal information secure that information, tell people why their data is being collected and allow people to have a say in whether they want their information used. If these companies turn around and transfer this information, any agreements they have made to secure the privacy of their consumers’ information would travel along with it. And if someone requests a company to stop using personal information, they finally have the legal power to make that demand.