Privacy rights violated again.

• Position: Obama Administration

The Obama Administration's call for a "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" is a noble effort, but one that likely will fail because it puts the power of consent into the hands of a public that, for the most part, does not know what to do with if and cannot use it effectively to protect privacy, according to Fred H. Cate, professor of law at Indiana University, Bloomington.

At the core of the legislative proposal is what the Obama Administration calls the "Consumer Control Principle," which would give consumers the right to exercise control over what personal data is collected and how it is used. That typically is achieved through voluntary consent.

"More than 30 years of experience with control-based laws has demonstrated that they don't work and they don't protect consumer privacy," Cate contends. "Individual choice is not the same thing as privacy protection, and merely providing choice does not necessarily enhance privacy protection."

Cate notes that most consumers overwhelmingly grant consent because they are focused more on the product or service rather than on making rational, thoughtful choices about data collection. Remember signing up for Facebook, or installing the latest version of iTunes? Consumers, when faced with privacy policies dozens of...