Hello Barbie Doll Raises Privacy Questions, Georgetown Professor Says

Mattel’s Wi-Fi-connected Hello Barbie doll shows the limits of privacy, said Meg Leta Jones, assistant professor at Georgetown University, at a Microsoft discussion Wednesday. “Barbie doesn’t have a screen, there’s nothing to click on,” Jones said: There is no way to see what the privacy policy is. If you ask the doll, she refers a user to a separate booklet, Jones said. “Who would have that booklet?” The Hello Barbie doll Jones brought with her belongs to a friend, she said. The doll is part of the “internet of other peoples’ things,” Jones said. But Jones said this raises the question of how much information someone could get from the doll if it falls into someone else’s hands. Everything said to Hello Barbie theoretically can be shared with other uses, Jones said. “Hello Barbie cannot keep a secret, no matter what she tells you,” she said. “The bigger question for this room is whether that’s a problem, whether it’s a privacy problem and what do we do about those types of problems.” States are taking a lead role in privacy cases, said Danielle Citron, a University of Maryland Law School professor. State attorneys general brought some of the first privacy cases, she said. State AGs since the 1990s have been “establishing norms that federal agencies have built upon and sharpening norms that are set by the feds,” she said. Early actions were based on the legal theory that “it’s an unfair and deceptive practice not to have a privacy policy,” Citron said. “At the time the FTC was arguing … self-regulation is just fine.”