Szoka cited an "assumption in the privacy debate that it's unusual that the doing of things precedes the figuring out what we should do about it, but that's how the Internet works". His approach is "sometimes derided as a patchwork approach", he said, "But to me that's a good approach. Government should get involved when there's actual harm."

Privacy advocates Coney and Stanley pointed to other industries, like the auto industry, to make the case that government should regulate practices that pose a clear risk. Coney said that if and when demonstrable harms to consumers come from big data, they, too, will be outsized, affecting thousands of people.

Stanley pointed to Gmail as an example. Calling it "the first step toward the application of artificial intelligence monitoring us," he said, "It's not that smart yet, so it's not that scary. But as it gets smarter it will get scarier, when you get to artificial intelligence levels that approach humans and they're still reading your mail."

The audience appeared to side with privacy advocates. One questioner who identified himself as building social networking applications for the Apple platform said he feared harming his own customers. "If we can't as an industry even defend passwords, how can we protect privacy?" he asked.

The IDG News Service