With controversy swirling around ID theft and electronic surveillance by the government, what should corporations do to protect customer data? Jim Dempsey, policy director at The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), spells out controversial advice such as "gather less data" and seemingly dire warnings such as "if you gather the data, the government will come calling." Whether you view CDT as an advocate or an adversary, its voice is being heard on Capitol Hill, so it's important to be aware of its stance on important corporate data policies and related issues.

We were founded on the principal that the Internet and other new digital communications technologies have a unique potential to promote democracy because they're decentralized, they're user controlled and they're global. Yet we felt that in order to achieve their democratic potential, these technologies needed a certain policy environment that the government could either promote, by enforcing competition, for example, or that it could interfere with, through censorship, limiting the free flow of information or by failing to protect privacy, thereby undermining trust in the technologies.

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