Today is Data Privacy Day, 2011. Have a good one.

The point of the day seems to be raise awareness of the data privacy issues which affect us all, both organizations and human beings. In the developed world it seems that someone is maintaining data about any of us. They are the companies we do business with, various governments, our doctors and insurance companies, our schools and more.

Data Privacy Day is an international celebration of the dignity of the individual expressed through personal information.

Microsoft has a Data Privacy Day page which mostly stresses how people are concerned about the problem, but also includes a number of tips for managing privacy.

Google’s Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, discusses Data Privacy Day on their Public Policy Blog. She will be on a panel discussion this morning with representatives of NIST, the FTC and the EFF. She also lists some of the features Google has brought to their software to manage privacy.

In an interview Lumension CEO Pat Clawson, analyst Eric Ogren from The Ogren Group argues that Data Privacy Day is a PR event with no real influence. He’s rather downbeat on the issue of data privacy, but says there are good examples to follow in the laws in other countries and the Massachusetts Data Protection Law. (Note: I also write for Lumension’s web site intelligentwhitelisting.com.)

Full story: Security Watch

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